Positive Jam

Do we need another miracle of Fleet Street?

2009-11-12T21:59:00.003Z

At a time when newspapers nail their political allegiance to whichever party they believe will win power and when there is little remaining of a mass circulation left-wing press, The Miracle of Fleet Street is a refreshing and intriguing read. The book, first published in 1925, is an account of the early days of the Daily Herald, a paper which evolved from a daily strike bulletin to become the voice of the labour left and their struggles for better working conditions, higher wages and women’s rights. It was these causes, and those more broadly of the poorest in society, which the Herald continued to support for nearly half a century before it fell into the hands of Rupert Murdoch who relaunched it as the Sun.

The book, now republished by Spokesman, is the work of George Lansbury who was part of the group who set-up the paper, and who later went on to become its editor. Lansbury chronicles the paper’s early life in plain but passionate prose, detailing the causes they took up and the continual financial and logistical problems that faced them at every turn. In those early years the Herald was ‘the hope of every rebel in the land’ and in its first issue was the only paper to attack the management of the Titanic for not adequately providing enough life boats for the poorer passengers on board and for prioritising the lives of the rich over women and children.

Lansbury himself was an intriguing character: a Marxist, East End MP, Labour mayor, anti-imperialist, republican, supporter of the suffragettes and pacifist. He never compromised his position for personal gain, a trait which was echoed by the policy of the paper which refused the money it could have received by selling its principles to potential advertisers.

If you are looking for a balanced and considered analysis of the press, Fleet Street and the Herald in the early decades of the twentieth century then you won’t find it here. However, what Lansbury presents is the inspiring story of a group of committed individuals who stood together to fight against the prevailing attitudes of their time. As you finish this book you can’t help but wish that such a mass-circulation paper existed today.

The Miracle of Fleet Street: The Story of the Daily Herald by George Lansbury is published by Spokesman Books and is out now.

Towards a New Internationalism

2009-06-12T10:34:00.003+01:00

If there is a book written with a broader scope than Stephen Chan’s The End of Certainty I have yet to read it. In order to explore some of the great questions of our time, Chan sets out to fuse together the thoughts of scholars, philosophers and theologians spanning the globe. Most writers have their favourite authors or periods of history from which they draw their inspiration, but as Chan plunders the life of Alexander the Great, the South African constitution and the writings of modern day Iranian intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush, it becomes clear that he has no preference for time or place.

In so doing he reveals the inadequacies of Western thought which has dominated the field of International Relations. In the late 1980’s Francis Fukuyama thought that the fall of communism and the dominance of capitalism had bought us to the end of history, while more recently Samuel Huntington argued that the great conflicts of our time would be between ‘incompatible’ civilisations, particularly between the West and Islam. Rejecting these dogmas and critiquing their over reliance on Western sources and perspectives, Chan argues that if we are to fully understand the world we need an internationalist perspective which utilises the thoughts of many civilisations, philosophies, religions and strands of academia.

Chan chose this gargantuan task ‘precisely because there is an intellectual vacuum in British political and social life. Three decades of dogged soundbite phraseologies of both Thatcherism and Blairism have made debate a contest between assertions of certainty, and these certainties are about the best form of coercion to apply in any international moral impasse.’ As certainty is rejected, Chan takes the reader on a journey beginning with a love story on the battlefields of Eritrea and ending with the fusion of antiquity and modernity found today in Iran.

Because the author has taken up such a unique project, and because the strands of thought which are drawn upon are so diverse in origin, at times Chan’s writing can be hard to absorb. Read it and then read it again. For, if like me, your knowledge of Hindu and Buddhist theology, the origins of Wahhabism or the Greek play Antigone is limited, you’ll find yourself introduced to new and intriguing ideas which help to illustrate and give meaning to the common humanity that runs through us all.

In the book’s final pages Chan asks what are we to do? As citizens we must reject the simplistic assumptions that declare with certainty that there are clear distinctions between us and them, good and evil, the victim and the persecutors. In essence Chan is asking for us to be inquisitive, to try to see the similarities between what at first may seem like incompatible ideals and to draw our inspiration from as wider spectrum as possible.

The End of Certainty: Towards a New Internationalism by Stephen Chan is published by Zed Books and is out now.

Searching for the common good

2009-04-28T09:41:00.004+01:00

The American Revolution was, perhaps, the single most influential event in modern political history. Spawning the democracies which have since spread around the globe, the revolution gave renewed impetus, credence and theoretical argument to the concepts of representative government, the separation of political powers, liberty, freedom and natural rights. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and James Madison, have all been immortalised by their deeds and words in that period. Yet one man, argued those who met at a United Nations colloquium in 1987, is unjustly absent from those so fondly and admirably remembered. Indeed, he was the first to call the United States of America by its now familiar name.

Thomas Paine, writes Leo Zonneveld, in the introduction to a new book bringing together the reflections of those at the colloquium, was a ‘brilliant activator and humble participant in the process of pointing out the reality of human brotherhood and true democracy.’ In the following 12 short chapters, a diverse group of Paine enthusiasts, including former Labour Party leader Michael Foot, UN assistant secretary-general Robert Muller and professor of American history Eric Foner, debate Paine’s legacy, put forward their interpretations of Paine’s work and talk about how he has influenced their lives. For Foot it is Paine’s unshakeable belief in the power of freedom which is most admirable; Foner offers Paine’s detest for hereditary privilege as one of his great characteristics; while Muller asks what would Paine of said about today’s world.

The direct references to Paine’s writing coupled with the biographical information present in many of the chapters, means that those who are not familiar with his life can easily follow what is being said and, indeed, may find this book an excellent introduction. For those well versed in the punchy, evocative prose of ‘Common Sense’ and ‘The Rights of Man’ some of this may be going over old ground. With the personal slant on Paine’s work given by many of the speakers, however, there are still plenty of new interpretations and insightful analysis to keep you interested.

In stark contrast to today’s mediated, spin driven politics a quote from a letter Paine sent to the Providence Gazette begins one chapter: ‘I have never yet made it the least point of consideration whether a thing is popular or unpopular, but whether it is right or wrong’. It is this uncompromising stance - one which on several occasions nearly cost Paine his life - which sets him apart from many others and provides the undercurrent for his admirers here. Unfortunately, this leads to the one problem with this book. At several points it becomes clear that there was no prior planning concerning who would say what, and this leads to several cases of repetition. Despite this and with June 8, 2009 marking the 200th anniversary of Paine’s death, this book succeeds in being a timely reminder of the work and influence of one of the leading political thinkers and activists of his or any generation.

Thomas Paine: In Search of the Common Good is published by Spokesman Books and is out now.

The Internet and political engagement

2009-03-26T11:20:00.002Z

Increasing apathy concerning citizens’ attitudes towards and engagement with politics is a well-established and substantially expressed opinion in the western world. There are numerous statistics which illustrate growing cynicism and frustration among voters, lack of interest in political issues and parties, and a trend of decreasing turnout in elections.

In his book Democracy: Crisis and Renewal Paul Ginsborg argues that the current situation surrounding democracy is a crisis of quality not quantity. Democracy as an ideal and as an actual form of government has spread globally to a point whereby it is the most predominant form of government - 62% of nations are now electoral democracies according to Freedom House. During this time of global democratisation, however, disaffection has grown among citizens in nations with relatively longstanding democratic traditions. For Ginsborg this disaffection has shown itself in several ways including ‘declining voter turnout, declining membership of parties, loss of faith in democratic institutions and in the political class in general.’

Ginsborg identifies four structural changes which have helped bring about this discontent. Firstly, ‘the assignation of politics to a separate sphere, inhabited by professionals, organised party elites, protected by the technical language and bureaucratic practice of administrators, and to a very great extent impermeable to the general public.’ Thus, creating a situation or at least an impression of the public as a separate entity who do not possess the knowledge or means to participate in the political process. Secondly, cultural and socio-economic changes have created societies ‘rich in comforts but poor in time’ where dominance of consumer capitalism has resulted in the spread of ‘individual and family self-celebration and self-interest, of increased television viewing and dependence.’ Thirdly, the plutocratic nature of politics means that although everybody is equal at the ballot box, those with the greatest financial resources wield much greater political influence. This can lead to corruption, positions of power for party fundraisers and an alienation of those who lack such privileges. Lastly, Ginsborg singles out what was the ‘most vibrant democracy in the world’, the United States, whose foreign policy he believes has damaged democracy around the globe.

The Internet has the potential to alter the ways in which citizens participate in a democracy and possibly reverse some of these trends. American academic Bruce Bimber writes in Information and American Democracy that the Internet: ‘has precipitated much speculation about political change and transformation, from visions of direct democracy and erosion of processes of representation and institutional deliberation because of new technology to enhancement or degradation of the “public sphere” and the state of citizens’ civic engagement.’ The following will look at who these competing ideas relate to political engagement.

Passive or active engagement?

American President Woodrow Wilson said that a citizen “cannot be said to be participating in public opinion at all until he has laid his mind alongside the minds of his neighbours and discussed with them the incidents of the day and the tendencies of the time.” Reading the newspaper is simply not enough. It is this distinction between passively consuming and actively participating in democracy which is one of the fundamental differences between how new and old forms of information communication technologies foster an interest and involvement in politics.

In a pre-web age there was a movement from the participatory to the professional and representative form of voluntary organization. During this period the one-way flow of political information, produced and communicated by a small number of gatekeepers, meant that very few citizens actively participated in generating or questioning political information. The Internet provides the potential for a partial reversal of this process by allowing a greater number of people to participate directly in politics by starting their own organisations or producing their own information. In this vein Bimber puts forward the argument that new technologies have led to post-bureaucratic political organisations which possess three distinct characteristics with regards to fostering active engagement.

Firstly, the start up costs required to organise collective action are significantly lower than in the past and thus resources are less of a barrier to political action. Secondly, ‘as the flow of information inside political organisations grows increasingly independent of people’s official functions or roles, one of the foundations of Weberian bureaucracy is weakened: the formal segregation of information and communication as a function of those roles.’ One of the consequences of this change has seen the increased participation of those from outside the standard roles of political organisations in the generation and communication of information. Examples of this can be seen on the numerous citizen journalism websites, forums on the websites of political organisations, or the comments left on articles on newspaper websites. Lastly, the much greater fluidity of membership of post-bureaucratic organisations means that citizens can join more groups at less financial cost, which Bimber sees as leading to a move away from issue-based affiliation towards an events-based one.

These new forms of online organisations and communication platforms have led to information abundance and a more chaotic, globalised and networked information environment. Changes which have resulted in the partial weakening of national boundaries and the corporate and political control of information, therefore making the information environment more democratic.

All of the above changes in how information is produced, communicated and used for collective action point towards the possibility of a more active citizen. Now, instead of simply reading about politics in the newspaper the public can set-up a blog or website to express their views; start organisations to campaign on specific issues; network with others with similar interests on social networking sites; post comments and add sources on newspaper websites such as Comment is Free. These optimistic interpretations of how the Internet is affecting political engagement need to be tempered, however, as there are other more dystopian implications of the increased use of the Internet by citizens.

Politics carried out on the Internet can often take the form of simply putting a name to something without thinking too much about it. Examples include joining a group on a social networking site, sending a pre-written letter to a politician or signing an online petition. While these are forms of engagement many see them as an extension of what Benjamin Barber called ‘weak democracy’. Moreover, according to Bimber, ‘the problem with centrally orchestrated, “cheap” communication is not that none of the citizens participating are serious about the issue at hand, but that such efforts conceal the extent to which various citizens are interested and serious. Elected officials have little incentive to ignore serious and interested constituents and much greater incentive to ignore the background noise of the nonserious’.’ Therefore, while the Internet may allow great numbers of people to support a campaign, the actual effect of such support maybe significantly diminished. In his book The End of Politics Carl Boggs concludes that ‘the system now in place is, of course, a marvelously efficient instrument for gathering data and sending messages. But it is another matter for ordinary people, especially in marginalized sectors of the economy, to be able to register genuine choices, feelings, and critical opinions.’ Furthermore, the often isolated nature of politics online does not breed the active formation of social relationships which Boggs sees as vital for social movements to succeed.

Using the Internet for political purposes, as the above shows, can involve active or passive participation. The more active forms that can be developed the stronger democracy will become, however, the Internet is not destined to foster one type over the other. Pessimists, such as Boggs would argue that ‘global information technology is already thoroughly permeated with such capitalist values as: a tough, aggressive individualism, an intensely competitive ethos, commodified images, and an instrumental rationality’ which will result in control by corporations and elite actors who have no interest in developing active participation among the majority of citizens. Optimists argue, contradictorily, that the chaotic and uncontrollable nature of the Internet and the post-bureaucratic organisations it allows to grow will cause more active forms of participation to develop.

Direct and deliberative democracy online

The considerations above have centred on how citizens engage with politics in a representative democracy. However, the Internet offers not only the possibility of different forms and levels of engagement within the existing democratic system itself but, by fostering the direct involvement of citizens in political decision making, the opportunity of changing that system. Reawakening the old debate surrounding the ‘liberty of the ancients’ and the ‘liberty of the moderns’, the Internet has caused many to seriously consider the idea of the increased use, both in scope and regularity, of direct and deliberative democracy.

Benjamin Constant, speaking in 1819, argued that in small communities direct democracy based on the Athenian model was achievable but that in larger, more complex societies only representative forms of government were possible, thus making a distinction between what he saw as liberty in the ancient and liberty in the modern world. Since Constant’s distinction was made representative democracy has spread with few exceptions at the expense of any form of direct or deliberative democracy, even at a local level.

The Internet affects direct and deliberative democracy in three key ways: by allowing people to vote online, by providing information to voters to help them make a decision and by giving citizens a platform to express their opinions. The second and third of these factors are, perhaps, the most crucial as many of the critics of direct and deliberative democracy see it as passive (direct) and selective (deliberative), a critic which is, somewhat, circumvented by the adequate supply of information in order to make an informed choice and by allowing more people to take part.

There are many instances when policy decisions are best derived from the knowledge and opinions of a small group of specialist. However, John Matsusaka, who has studied various forms of direct democracy, argues that ‘there are cases where good policymaking may require information that is not know or knowable by experts … such as whether to use capital punishment or allow physician-assisted suicide.’ In these cases the relevant information along with competing arguments can be made available to all online at no cost to the citizen. People can discuss the various issues either online or in other mediums before voting, again either online or in-person.

Forms of direct and deliberative democracy do not have to solely concern the actions of governments in order to increase political engagement. They could be used to help create a political party’s manifesto commitments or to decide the specific areas where an NGO will focus their campaigning. If people feel that they can express their opinion and discuss options with others and that the process will have tangible results then there is an increased chance that they will take part.

On their own direct and deliberative models of political engagement offer little hope for the reduction of apathy and the strengthening of democracy. Direct voting in referenda without the required information and debate may result in passive, ‘couch potato’ engagement, with too much power given to the mass media. Deliberation without a vote would do little to motivate an apathetic voter who would fail to see the point in deliberation if there is no end result. It is, therefore, the possibility of combining both forms which represents the Internet’s greatest potential in altering how citizens interact with the decision making process.

A commune of ideas of an information cocoon?

Due to the nature of its development the Internet has certain unique characteristics that contrast to other forms of communication technology and have resulted in the Internet possessing a distinct culture. Part of this culture is the open sharing of information which allows for greater levels of collaboration. Introducing his concept of ‘we-think’ Charles Leadbeater asks us to ‘imagine for a moment that a computer nerd, an academic, a hippie and a peasant get together for a joint project.’ By working together through collaborative online platforms such as Wikis, Leadbeater argues that such diverse groups can, by sharing their knowledge and expertise, achieve great things. Potentially this holds great promise for politically engaging citizens by creating a more democratic way of supplying information and decision-making. A problem is posed - say, should the post-office be partly privatised? - an online platform for debate is created and a diverse group of people put forward relevant information, suggestions and arguments. This is a greatly simplified situation but, by involving more people in the decision making process and by drawing on diverse facts and opinions, the potential for greater democratic engagement is clear. Furthermore, not only does this form of organisation help to increase the number of citizens involved in politics it will, in certain circumstances, lead to better outcomes, with studies showing that groups with diverse skills and broad and wide ranging outlooks often develop better solutions than more intelligent groups who have similar skills and outlooks.

‘We-think’ or more broadly the networking of a diverse group to discuss an issue or solve a problem is not the only way in which people can use the Internet to find out or generate information. Instead users can seek out information from likeminded people who simply echo what they already know and believe. Politically this would lead to people only reading/listening to the opinions of those with the same ideological backgrounds. In his sudy of the Internet, Republic.com 2.0, Cass Sunstein calls this form of filtering an information cocoon which decreases the ‘unplanned, unanticipated encounters [which] are central to democracy’ while also removing the shared experiences which help people to understand one another and tackle social problems together. This solipsistic formation of online communities is detrimental to democracy as it creates the possibility of warring factions who, instead of regarding what others have to say before making decisions, become isolated and fail to progress. Furthermore, the fact that the majority of Internet use is for the purposes of entertainment exacerbates the problems that such Internet use possess for political engagement because not only can people use the Internet to cocoon themselves from political information which counters their preconceptions, they may also be using it to cocoon themselves from politics entirely.

The Internet - enhancing or degrading political engagement?

The ways that Internet is affecting citizen engagement with politics provides an intriguing picture. Bimber’s theory of post-bureaucratic political organisations, Brian McNair’s paradigm of information chaos, platforms for communal thinking and debate in ways outlined by Leadbeater and the increased opportunities for more direct and deliberative democracy all point towards new forms of increased political engagement and wider access to information. At the same time there is ample evidence that political use of the Internet is at the periphery of online activity, that much of the political activity taking place online is passive, and that the Internet is cocooning people in to fragmented groups all of which counter democratic possibilities. Furthermore, there is little evidence to suggest that the Internet has increased membership levels of political parties, trust in politicians or turnout at elections.

In all likelihood the Internet is in its infancy and even in advanced post-industrial societies it is far from a universal technology with significant differences in levels of access related to race, gender age and education. Moreover, in the developing world - where it could have its greatest democratising effects - it is used mainly by elite members of society and may even be causing greater divisions in political engagement. Furthermore, there are dangers of too much democracy which may lead to mob rule, segregation of minority groups and issues and safeguards against these possibilities must be built into any framework for improving democratic participation. Allowing more citizens to participate in politics is also counter-productive for many powerful groups within society and it would be naïve to think that the Internet will be used to increase citizen engagement without attempts to control or reject it. Bearing this in mind any conclusions as to the democratising potential of the Internet need to be tempered.

The confusing nature and abundance of information present in today’s globalised world means that the ideal of the informed citizen is impossible. People do not have the time or the knowledge to understand all the complexities of the modern world. Thus, citizens are choosing to engage in greater detail with smaller numbers of issues and events, a process which is partly facilitated by the Internet. At the same time citizens are cynical and fed-up with the ‘playing of politics’ which abounds within the party system. When combined together these factors are leading to declining political party membership and voter turnout as well as an overall disinterest in party politics. However, this does not mean that the public is less interested in politics but that the indicators that are used to measure engagement are not sufficient. Instead new forms of engagement, many as a result in changes in ICTs are emerging, such as blogging, citizen journalism and increased events-based campaigning.

Organisations that develop new ways of engaging with the public which are: postbureaucratic, communal, issue and event driven, incorporate forms of direct and deliberative democracy and active engagement are the most likely to succeed in motivating citizens. By allowing citizens to meaningfully participate in the political sphere, and by replacing the plutocratic nature of political influence with a more meritocratic one, organisations with these characteristics will help to reverse several of the structural changes which Ginsborg identified as responsible for political apathy.

Equality - the route to a better society

2009-03-19T16:46:00.004Z

Peter Mandelson proved true to his word when he said that new Labour was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.” While the last 10 years has seen an end to the rapacious growth in inequality presided over by Margaret Thatcher, the super-rich have still got wealthier while those at the bottom have stagnated. Conventional wisdom scorned at those who felt uneasy about million pound bonuses and footballers earning in a week what the majority made in four years. If the country is richer overall everyone benefits, so let the ‘wealth creators’ get on with it and wait for the money to trickle down. Conventional wisdom was wrong and for those who doubted it now there is substantial evidence to prove it.

Research carried out by the Equality Trust and published in a new book The Spirit Level reveals that there is a startling correlation between inequality and social problems. Once a society reaches a certain level of affluence it no longer matters about levels of income, instead it is the difference between the rich and the poor which we should be concerned about. Whether looking at physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage births or child well-being - the greater the level of inequality the worse the outcome. Mental illness is three times more likely in the US as in Japan; in the UK there are nearly twice as many infant deaths as in Sweden; and Australia - a nation famed for its sporting prowess - has approximately twice the levels of obesity compared to the Netherlands. These examples are not handpicked extremes but point to a conclusive trend.

The French playwright, Henry Becque, quipped that ‘what makes equality such a difficult business is that we only want it with our superiors.’ For many people higher up the social hierarchy there is a belief that greater equality holds nothing for them; a belief which has proved a stumbling block for those trying to convince people that we should strive to decrease the gap between the richest and the poorest. Perhaps, then, the most striking finding from the Equality Trust’s research is the myth destroying fact that in unequal societies the better of suffer as well. One example shows that children from wealthy families in unequal nations have lower literacy levels than their counterparts in more equal countries, there are numerous more.

So greater equality rather than higher average levels of wealth is the key to future development. As the report concludes ‘we have now come to the end of what economic growth can do for developed countries. Measures of well-being or of happiness no longer rise with economic growth … For rich countries to get even richer makes little or no difference to the prevalence of health and social problems … Societies with smaller income differences between rich and poor are more cohesive: community life is stronger, levels of trust are higher and there is less violence. The vast majority of the population seem to benefit from greater equality.’

With the government and the media’s attention focused on fighting the recession plans to develop a more equal society are lacking. Higher taxes for the richest, increasing the minimum wage, capping bonuses, limiting pay and increasing inheritance tax for the wealthy few are just some of the possible ways to level the playing field. At precisely the time when substantial changes can be made it is important that political pressure is applied so that we do not see a return to the old, failed and unjust policies which allowed the UK to become one of the world’s most unequal societies.

To support the Equality Trust and campaign for a more equal society sign the Equality Charter - http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/take-action - and write to your M.P.

The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better is written by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett and is published by Allen Lane

Colombia's drug war investigated

2009-02-05T10:38:00.006Z

For several decades Colombian civilians have been caught in the midst of a cocaine and oil-fuelled conflict. Government forces, paramilitary soldiers and various guerrilla groups have been fighting to control the country’s oil-rich lands and cocaine fields. In 2000 the U.S. launched Plan Colombia, a multibillion-dollar operation which switched the focus of the war on drugs away from drug traffickers to coca farmers. A key part of the strategy involved funding the Colombian government to carryout aerial fumigations of coca fields in the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) controlled regions, a policy which the U.S. government claimed successfully destroyed all of the plants. There was, however, little firsthand, independent evidence to support these claims and, with this in mind, Garry Leech set-out to see the impacts of Plan Colombia for himself.

Leech is a rare breed of journalist; one who sacrifices his own safety and comfort to investigative topics often over-looked by mainstream corporate media. In his latest book, Beyond Bogotá: Diary of a Drug War Journalist in Colombia, Leech intertwines historical explanation of Colombia’s drug war and his personal politicisation from naïve young traveller to investigative reporter, around the books central narrative of his 11-hour imprisonment by the FARC, who held him captive when he tried to enter La Macarena National Park to see the impact of the most recent fumigations, in August 2006.

Each chapter of this mix of autobiography, travel narrative and investigative journalism represents one hour of Leech’s ordeal as he waits, held at gunpoint, while rebel commanders decide his fate. ‘At times like this,’ writes Leech, ‘I wonder why the hell I do the type of work I do. The time is passing interminably slowly. The option to change my mind, to simply walk away, no longer exists. I am now at the mercy of the FARC. Some distant rebel commander will be my judge, jury, and if things take a real turn for the worse, my executioner.’ This first person account of Leech’s captivity keeps the story flowing along in crisp, concise language but although these sections form the most exciting parts of the book, it is the more in depth explorations of the war on drugs and its impact on South American political and civil society which make up the books most interesting and enlightening aspects.

As a young traveller we learn that the author first visited Latin America disinterested in the areas political make-up. As he sees and learns more about the conditions in the various countries he passes through he becomes ever more politicised and when he returns seven years later, at a time when ‘the Panama invasion marked the first time that the war on drugs was used to justify direct US intervention in a Latin American nation,’ Leech has started to build an understanding of how political factors are impacting on the lives of Latin American citizens. From here on the reader is taken through various US interventions in Latin America which, according to Leech, have been self-serving and resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent people and ruined the lives of large swathes of the peasant population.

In recent years the author’s research has centred on investigating the impacts of Plan Colombia which he has done through a series of high-risk interviews with guerrillas, government soldiers, paramilitaries and farmers. These encounters allow Leech to delve behind the stated reasons and aims of Plan Colombia to reveal its true impacts. Statistics don’t always do justice to the scale of suffering which takes place in conflicts but Leech manages to humanize the raw numbers as he vividly describes his encounters with ordinary Colombians struggling to live amongst the poverty and destruction which plagues their lives. Leech finds that U.S. and Colombian government claims are lies: the fumigations have failed to significantly reduce the amount of cocaine produced (growers have developed a higher yielding plant which is more resistant to the fumigations) and instead have destroyed subsistence crops leaving much of the rural population starving. At the same time the neoliberal economic reforms which have accompanied the fumigations as part of Plan Colombia have exploited the indigenous population, creating massive wealth disparity and exacerbated the conflict. By seeking out and speaking to those most adversely affected by the Colombian and U.S. government actions, Leech has given a voice to those under-represented in mainstream coverage.

While Leech meticulously details the devastating impact that the drug war is having on Colombia’s civilian population he doesn’t attempt to offer any solutions. As he states ‘Colombia’s long, dark past suggests that the attainment of such noble objectives [democracy, peace and justice] is an impossible dream.’ But the people who Leech has met on his travels through Colombia offer him the belief that one-day the situation may improve.

At several points throughout this book Leech asks himself why he has placed himself in such danger and more importantly what if he never sees his wife and child again? The answers are evident to all who read this book. Leech, and those correspondents like him, allow us to see the true picture, that which is often hidden behind the distorted propaganda emitted by governments around the globe. It is because of his dedication to find out, at first-hand, the truth, that this book will be of great value to those who wish to further their knowledge of socio-economic and political issues in Latin American or for those who wish to see the much maligned profession of journalism in its purest form.

Beyond Bogotá: Diary of a Drug War Journalist in Colombia by Garry Leech is published by Beacon Press.

Amnesty's challenge to Obama

2009-01-23T11:02:00.004Z

With Barrack Obama’s presidency underway Amnesty International has created a new film and check-list asking the President to ‘take concrete steps to demonstrate his commitment to international human rights standards, including in the context of countering terrorism.’

Their challenges come under three broad headings:

• Close Guantánamo and end illegal detention
• Eradicate torture and other ill-treatment
• End impunity

To send an email to President Obama and back Amnesty’s plan click the link below.

http://obama100days.amnesty.org/petition.html

Media control or media chaos?

2009-01-13T14:18:00.009Z

Claims that the media act in the interests of powerful groups in society, replicating their principle ideologies while marginalising others, dominated media and communications research in the latter half of the twentieth century. Grouped together these theories form the ‘control paradigm’. As the antithesis of the ‘control paradigm’, Brian McNair’s book, Cultural Chaos: Journalism, News and Power in a Globalised World (2006), seeks to explain, firstly by illustrating the weaknesses of the ‘control paradigm’ and then by developing his own theory of ‘cultural chaos’, how previous concepts of control are no longer satisfactory when examining the media today.

In section one this essay will briefly contextualise McNair’s work by outlining some of the previous theories put forward to conceptualise media/power relations. It will then highlight the main arguments McNair puts forward in both his criticisms of previous sociological, cultural and economic attempts to analyse the media and his own theory of how the media can be examined through the ideas of chaos.

Section two will evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of McNair’s work in relation to its economic drivers. Here I will argue that McNair’s exploration of capitalism - which he sees as the most successful economic system and one which removes the need for ideological control - forms a convincing part of his argument. When discussing how the commodification of journalism supports his new model, however, his work is weaker and in this section he lacks the support of substantial empirical evidence, while failing to consider more recent impacts of ownership concentration and commercial pressures in the media.

Lastly, the third section will focus on the role McNair sees the Internet playing in shaping media coverage both now and in the future. I will argue that although the author is correct in concluding that the Internet offers the opportunity for a more pluralistic media, his work fails to substantiate with empirical evidence how the Internet is affecting mainstream media and audiences, while at the same time understating the negative impacts of the Internet on media production and reception.

Section 1

1.1 - Historical background

Cultural Chaos builds on much of the author’s previous work (McNair, 1996, 1998, 2000) and in essence concerns the relationships between the media, democracy, power and society. Historically according to McQuail (2000) research concerning these relationships can be divided into two broad categories which he calls the ‘dominant paradigm’ and the ‘alternative paradigm’. Sitting within the ‘dominant paradigm’ are the works of functionalists who see the media as promoting the normative characteristics of Western societies. Within this framework the media is described as essential in maintaining social order with the assumption that media communication ‘works towards the integration, continuity and normality of society, although also recognizing that mass communication can have dysfunctional (disruptive or harmful) consequences’ (Ibid. p. 46). This arm of media sociology came to prominence largely in the post-war era but was surpassed during the 1970’s and 80’s by the ‘alternative paradigm’. The ‘alternative paradigm’ takes ‘a different view of society; one which does not accept the prevailing liberal-capitalist order as just or inevitable or the best one can hope for [and finds] … sufficient common basis for rejecting the hidden ideology of pluralism and of conservative functionalism’ (Ibid. p.49). These views led many to see the media as reproducing the ideology of society’s elite and as such were a controlling force. When grouped together these concepts form the ‘control paradigm’.

1.2 - The ‘control paradigm’

Rooted in the Marxist tradition, the ‘control paradigm’ is made up of theories which seek to explain how and why the media replicate what its proponents see as society’s dominant ideology (McQuail, 2000; Allen, 1999; McNair, 1998). A key reason for this and ‘the common theme running through these approaches is that the media are structurally linked to dominant groups in society by economic, political and cultural connection’ (McNair, 2006 p. 35). Accordingly the media are seen as instruments of control used by the ruling class to exploit or pacify other social groups. Its conceptual and theoretical traditions can be traced back to the work of the Frankfurt School who, in seeking to explain the failure of Marx’s predictions of social change, ‘looked at the capacity of the ‘superstructure’ (especially ideas and ideology represented in the mass media) to subvert material and historical forces of economic change’ (McQuail, 2000, p.96). More recently the works of, among others, Hall, et al., (1978), Glasgow University Media Group (1976, 1980, 1985), Herman and Chomsky (1988), Bourdieu (1998) and Edwards and Cromwell (2006) have come to define the key theoretical characteristics of the ‘control paradigm’ and also, by analysing media content, illustrate what they see as the media’s bias towards dominant groups.

Much of McNair’s work in examining the ‘control paradigm’ is not original but instead draws on many years of critical examination which he argues apply with ‘much greater force to contemporary versions of the control model’ (McNair, 2006, p.37). In summary McNair puts forward the following key factors which undermine the ‘control paradigm’. Firstly, he argues that it is prone to over-generalisation and exaggeration in the sense that it undervalues any exceptions and presents media content out of context. Secondly, according to McNair, there is little allowance within the model for the notion of an active audience, while at the same time the complexity of linking media coverage to political outcomes is over looked. Lastly, McNair contends that new developments in both communications technologies and the commodification of alternative-culture run counter to the ‘control paradigm’. With these criticisms in mind McNair seeks to find a more accurate way to understand media/power relations.

1.3 - From control to chaos

Although McNair references his work to that of chaotic systems in the natural sciences it is the above concepts and models of the media which form the historical background for this book and it is this subject which he seeks to build upon. This area has been chosen due to the changing nature of media communication as a result of globalisation and new technological developments. Much of the literature in support of the ‘control paradigm’ dates from the 1970’s and 80’s but McNair claims that ‘three decades later and in a transformed environmental context the propaganda model, and contemporary applications of the control paradigm in general, fail to account for the unruliness and ideological fluidity of media outputs, or to understand the complexity of the processes which produce them’ (2006, p.36).

As a result of the weaknesses of the ‘control paradigm’ that McNair sees as being exacerbated by globalisation and new information communication technologies (NICT) he proposes a paradigmatic shift to what he calls the ‘chaos paradigm’. In so doing McNair’s theories sit closest to those in McQuail’s ‘dominant paradigm’ and with the traditions of two groups of thinkers: those who see the media, globalisation and capitalism as forces for good which help to bring about beneficial social change (such as Norberg, 2003) and those following a technological deterministic approach who argue that NICT may have positive democratising effects (such as Becket, 2008; Gillmor, 2006; Bimber, 1998).
The characteristics of the ‘chaos paradigm’ are shown in table 1 below (click to enlarge) and illustrate the changing nature of the globalised information environment which form the central findings of McNair’s work.

Having established these new characteristics McNair concludes that it is also necessary to rethink the cultural pessimism which is closely tied to the features of the ‘control paradigm’ shown above. For McNair this new paradigm makes redundant the dominant forms of sociological and cultural media critiques, those situated in the concepts of dominant ideologies, bias and the dumbing-down of media content. Marx and Engels (1998) predicted that the weaknesses of capitalism would eventually destroy it, yet, as McNair argues, in the end their warnings were circumvented by capitalism’s evolution and consequently its longevity, a process that McNair sees as on-going and of which the continued globalisation of the media is a part. Thus he states that: “If consistent with the evolutionary principle that adaptable systems are better at coping with environmental change than rigid and inflexible ones, a high measure of cultural chaos within a particular society will equate with a relatively high capacity for progressive reform, and a low propensity for systemic collapse’ (McNair, p.203). In this sense McNair has taken an optimistic rather than pessimistic stance on how a chaotic media system interacts with society, once again situating his work within McQuail’s ‘dominant paradigm’ and countering those who view the media as a controlling and negative force.

Section 2

2.1 - Significance of the ‘chaos paradigm’

From the 1960’s onwards social and cultural change has seen a shift from modernity to postmodernity, the replacement of the industrial age with the information age, a decentring of power and intensified globalisation (Lister, et al., 2003). These changes have had significant impacts upon the media (as well as, in part, being driven by changes within the media) and therefore previous sociological and cultural attempts to conceptualise the media require reanalysis. Furthermore, as ‘virtually everybody will agree on the importance of the media of communication in shaping the democratic character of society’ (Dahlgren, 2001, p.64), a factor which has been intensified by the above changes, McNair’s work is of vital importance to those who wish to understand the modern media and its wide ranging implications. However, while it is a significant addition to media scholarship, it is not without its faults and it is just as important because of the questions it poses as for the answers it provides.

2.2 - The economics of the ‘chaos paradigm’

McNair is at his most convincing when discussing the first stage of what he calls the ‘the economic drivers of cultural chaos’ (p.87), that being the increased (albeit unequal) quality of life which those in the Western world have enjoyed because of the capitalist system. In chapter 2 he puts forward his argument that this, alongside the lack of an alternative, renders the need for ideological control redundant. Indeed, as Norberg (2003) argues, as a result of the emergence of capitalism as the dominant economic structure poverty has been reduced, life expectancy has increased, infant mortality has fallen, world hunger has declined, educational standards have risen and democracy is more prevalent. In this situation there would seem to be less need for control. Capitalism’s dominance, however, does not remove the need for control altogether. Those groups who are experiencing the least benefit may require some form of control in order that those who receive the most can continue to do so. To this end McNair fails to distinguish between the different degrees of capitalism such as laissez faire or state controlled and as such ignores the battle for control between them.

For McNair the second economic driver of chaos ‘is the evolution of news and other journalistic forms as cultural commodities’ (p.87) resulting in the financial incentive to criticise elites and increased competition between media companies. While this idea is supported by others such as Milne (2005) it seems to be that media dissent as discussed by McNair is of low frequency but at times high impact. In this case McNair fails to support his case with any evidence other than to put forward by a brief list of counter-culture products such as Michael Moore’s films and Naomi Klein’s books . In order to substantiate his claims further evidence is needed as to the effects of such products and their prevalence, especially in the mass media. Furthermore, McNair also ignores the fact that along with the economic incentives for dissent, commercial pressures have also made it easier for media content to be controlled.

Commercial pressures in mainstream media have led to the concentration of media ownership in many countries (for specific figures from the US see McChesney and Nichols, 2002) which has also brought about a decrease in staffing levels. At the same time output, such as the number of articles printed, has increased. This process has had a substantial impact on the role which journalists play resulting in less fact checking and an increased reliance on PR and the wire services both of which have decreased objectivity and increased the spreading of factually inaccurate material, a process which Davis (2008) calls ‘churnalism’. To exploit this organisations have increasingly trained their press officers to write press releases in a journalistic style so that the distinction between work produced by journalists and public relations can be difficult to draw. At the same time the number of people employed in PR in both the public and private sector has increased dramatically (Davis, 2002; Franklin 1994). These trends have made mainstream media easier not harder to control, in the sense that they have less time validate information supplied through PR.

There is, therefore, a conflict concerning how commercialisation impacts upon the media. On the one hand there are those who argue that because dissent has an economic value it is reducing the media’s compliance with elite groups within society. Then there are those who claim that commercial pressures are making it easier for the media to be manipulated and thus they are unable to act as the fourth estate. Neither of these claims seems conclusive and indeed it may be the case that both are correct.

Section 3 – Chaos and the Internet

3.1 – McNair’s claims

News on the Internet, whether generated by professional journalists or citizens, challenges the consensus often portrayed by the mainstream media by representing different viewpoints or by covering issues which the mainstream media fails to report. Open publishing - whereby anyone is allowed to post information onto a website, rather than using a journalist to select and package material – has the potential to communicate the experiences, observations and opinions of an infinite number of people (Ross and Nightingale, 2003). These factors form the basis of how the Internet fits into and helps bring about the ‘chaos paradigm’.

For McNair the Internet has ‘transformed the pattern of flow of journalistic communication by allowing print and broadcast news outlets hitherto constrained within national boundaries to achieve global reach’ (p.121). Consequently wherever you are in the world, as long as you have Internet access, you can receive far more information than was ever previously possible. With regard to the production of information, the Internet has reduced the financial costs of production at the basic level to a fraction of what it was. Thus, with little expertise and for the cost of a computer and Internet access anyone can set-up and write a blog with a potential audience of billions.

Blogs, according to McNair have three key characteristics which lead to chaos. Firstly, they are subjective, meaning that any opinion can be expressed or fact highlighted without the need for editorial approval or responsibility. Secondly, blogs are interactive allowing for a two way flow of information which in turn allows for more diverse and uncontrollable content. Lastly, blogs allow for an increased level of connectivity whereby people can follow links to further sources of information. In support of these claims McNair sites several examples of Internet sources, such as the Baghdad Blogger, Matt Drudge and Norman Geras , which have subverted the mainstream and become popular in their own right. These sites, coupled with those that are picked up and used as sources by the mass media, produce substantial amounts of information, a process which McNair sees as uncontrollable.

3.2 – Conflicting evidence on the impacts of the Internet (Media effects, media use and the Internet)

McNair’s work is most convincing when talking about the potential of the Internet to interact with other areas of the public sphere. Coverage of the terrorist attacks which took place in Mumbai during November 2008 would seem to support his argument as to how the Internet is creating a more chaotic information environment. According to Jarvis (2008) ‘the witnesses are taking over the news. That will fundamentally change our experience of news, the role of witnesses and participants, the role of journalists and news organisations, and the impact reporting has on events. Mumbai - like the [2008] Sichuan earthquake - brought reports from witnesses via Twitter and blogs. Both then appeared on traditional media as online witnesses were quoted and interviewed.’ Thus, in this instance, we can see a crossover between the blogosphere and other parts of the public sphere. Although, once again this is another singular example and there is need for further evaluation of the role the Internet plays in the public sphere in order to form firm conclusions as to how their relationship can be viewed.

McNair himself concedes that the majority of websites and particularly blogs are not set-up to communicate serious news with the majority being viewed by very few people. He then diverts attention away from these to the relatively small number of websites he wishes to consider. In so doing, however, he may be drawing unrealistic conclusions about the impact of the Internet in relations to control and chaos. Thus, there are two factors concerning the use of the Internet which McNair fails to accommodate. Firstly, that the majority of Internet use is for the purposes of entertainment (UK Statistics Authority, 2006; Althaus and Tewksbury, 2000) and consequently it could be argued that the Internet acts as a distraction from serious news, making controlling information flows easier or unnecessary due to the fact that less people are engaging with current affairs. Secondly, Internet audiences are fragmented when compared to traditional media outlets. As a result information communicated on the Internet will only have a widespread impact if it is either communicated through a large number of sites or if it is picked up and transmitted by mainstream media outlets, thus seeing the continuation of the journalist as a ‘gatekeeper’ and reinstating a hierarchical nature to the flow of information which McNair claims was only present in the ‘control paradigm’ (see table 1).

If we accept that Internet sources - excluding websites which are representations of already established mainstream media outlets - require amplification by traditional media in order to influence political and public opinion then scholarship concerning new media/old media relations provides us with a muddled and inconclusive picture. As Robinson (2004) states regarding relations between old and new media in times of conflict: ‘In terms of influencing mainstream news coverage, the extent to which on-line information sources have been integrated into processes of news-gathering has received insufficient attention from empirically based academic research’(p.102). McNair does little to solve this problem but there are studies which suggest that the influence of the Internet is not as great as McNair claims.

O’Sullivan and Heinonen (2008) argue that ‘the potential for news in video or audio is often emphasised promotionally … but thus far, at least in Europe, it is arguable to what extent traditional news publishers have progressed in their online offerings beyond what is by now familiarly disparaged as “shovelware”’. This would seem to indicate that the Internet is having an insignificant impact on the content of mainstream media as it is simply another medium communicating the same information.

O’Sullivan and Heinonen (2008) proceed to question journalists about how the Internet is impacting on their working practices. While the majority see the Internet as an important tool for gathering information which does not threaten the overall quality of their journalism there are clear differences in ‘attitudes towards weblogs as research tools, on the basis of work profile. Print journalists said quite widely (84 per cent) that weblogs are not important. This opinion was expressed by substantially fewer online journalists (59 per cent), whereas mixed profile journalists held the middle ground (67 per cent).’ These findings show that although blogging may provide uncontrollable information, the majority of journalists do not view this information as important and therefore are unlikely to use it. It is noteworthy, though, that the online journalists in their sample were younger than the print journalists so it is likely that the trend will see more journalists using blogs as sources in the future. Currently, though, as Domingo, et al., (2008) conclude, in their study of the opportunities for audience participation in online newspapers, there is ‘a general reluctance to open up most of the news production process to the active involvement of citizens’.

McNair is correct in categorising the blogosphere as chaotic and supplies sufficient evidence to support this conclusion. However, its effects on other areas of the public sphere and therefore public opinion are much more open to debate as the above factors indicate. McNair states that in order to be part of a global public sphere the Internet must have three characteristics: ‘accessibility’, ‘independence’ and ‘influence’ (p.143). Due to its relatively cheap costs and its lack of corporate control and censorship the first two characteristics are met. McNair’s lack of investigation into the effects of the Internet on the content of mainstream media outlets, however, is a major weakness of his work which leaves his conclusions concerning the role the Internet plays in the ‘chaos paradigm’ open to debate and provides us with an area which requires further empirical investigation.

Conclusion

There can be little doubt that we need to re-conceptualise relations between the media, democracy, politics and society in order to understand how they operate in today’s globalised world. To this end McNair’s work is an important addition to media scholarship. His theory of chaos, however, is not as original and bold as it may appear at first. His paradigm is one of chaos in which political and social elites battle for, and sometimes achieve, control. In comparison modern concepts of the ‘control paradigm’ seek to show how control is the default position which others battle to subvert. In this sense the key difference between the two is not whether media content can be controlled but to what degree.

McNair’s work is premised on a strongly supported but not wholly original base - that of the exposed weaknesses of the ‘control paradigm’. It is convincing because there is undoubtedly more information available in the public sphere and that the means of producing this information has been greatly democratised. Yet his theory, especially his work on how the Internet integrates into the public sphere, is supported by little empirical evidence and does not substantiate the effects of Internet news. Both models have their strengths and weaknesses in theorising media in the current climate and both in turn are important concepts in understanding how the media operates. It would seem that we are neither living in a state of control or chaos but somewhere in between.

Word Count: 4024

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New book outlines plans for global tax justice

2009-01-09T11:01:00.004Z

In recent months the inherent failures of under-regulated financial markets have been exposed on a global scale. Reporters, columnists, economists and politicians have clamoured to tell the public what has gone wrong. Solutions, other than short-term fiscal stimuli, have been harder to come by. Tax Justice, a new book edited by Matti Kohonen and Francine Mestrum, attempts to begin this process by developing new models of global taxation and regulation that, the authors argue, will lead to a more just and stable world.

Split into three distinct sections, this collection of essays is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how public finances work on a global scale, how the often secretive world of tax havens allows for huge sums of money to be lost, and those who wish to begin exploring the possibilities for reform. As Tax Justice exemplifies, history tells us that in times of disaster reform is often easier to achieve. The choice we face is whether it takes the form of positive changes to environmental policy - “It is largely a consequence of reactions to the Second Oil Shock in 1979 … that Denmark today manages to cover 25 per cent of its energy consumption with wind power. Public subsidies paved the way with research and development, certification, testing and standardisation to build an industry with exports over $7 billion in 2007” - or the numerous and negative examples given by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine.

As governments around the world take on more debt and as international trade continues to slow down, issues concerning taxation, inequality and development are going to become increasingly important and contested. When the time comes for debts to be repaid, who will foot the bill? As richer nations search for savings how can international development continue? How can economic growth and environmental protection be achieved together?

In order to see economic and social justice, solutions to the above problems, according to Kohonen and Mestrum, must centre around global solidarity. While national sovereignty is important, they argue that ‘we must map out a global public that could set out rules and conventions for the new spheres that globalisation has opened up’. In essence, global problems require global solutions.

Over recent months, many people have predicted the end of free-market ideology, but few have offered an alternative. Ranging from issues surrounding income inequality to environmental taxation, from corruption in Kenya to the United States housing market, Tax Justice offers a timely plan which may help avoid future economic meltdown and bring about a fairer global society.

"Tax Justice - Putting Global Inequality on the Agenda" Edited by Matti Kohonen and Francine Mestrum is published by Pluto Press.

Click here to buy a copy

For more information about issues raised in this book visit http://www.taxjustice.net

An essay on objectivity

2009-01-05T22:49:00.002Z

BBC News is a highly trusted organisation, considered by many to be an example of classic journalism which produces some of the most impartial reporting found in mainstream media (Prinzing, 2008; Christensen, 2004; BBC, 2004). This essay will argue, however, that television news as a genre can never be completely objective and that BBC News is no different. The following will show that despite the often extensive attempts made by journalists, editors and station controllers, the structure of television news means that, at times, it will inevitably produce subjective coverage. Objectivity is also detrimentally affected by commercial pressures and journalistic practices which, while not unchangeable, are unlikely to disappear in the foreseeable future. Therefore, this essay will argue that if television news can never be truly objective, the ideal situation should not be plurality within news reports but plurality of news providers. Within this framework, the following will show that by altering how news is represented and received, the Internet can make significant strides in providing people with more objective information.

When analysing television news this essay will focus on the UK and in particular the BBC. The internet, however, will be viewed as non-nation specific as this is one of its key characteristics . Section one will examine the impacts of commercialisation, journalistic practices and the television medium on television news and, by drawing on examples from BBC news, show how these hinder objectivity. Section two will look at the similarities and differences in the representation and reception of news on television and the Internet by analysing the coverage of BBC television news and the Now Public Website.

Section 1 – How the television medium, journalistic practices and commercialisation inhibit objectivity

The notion of objectivity is complex and can have different meanings in different fields. For this essay I will use the journalistic definition given by McQuail:

Objectivity is a particular form of media practice and also a particular task of information collection, processing and dissemination. It should not be confused with the broader notion of truth, although it is one version of it. One main feature is the adoption of a position of detachment and neutrality towards the object of reporting. Secondly, there is a lack of partisanship; not taking sides in matters of dispute or showing bias. Thirdly, objectivity requires strict attachment to accuracy and other truth criteria … It also presumes a lack of ulterior motive or service to a third party.
(2005, p.200)

Mindich (1998) illustrates how journalists attempt to be objective and thus, as they see it, tell the truth. They do this, according to the author, by: remaining detached; communicating no partisanship; using an inverted pyramid style, whereby the most important parts of the report are at the beginning; using as many facts as possible as opposed to opinions; and giving all sides of the story. These attempts to remain objective, though, can be impeded and overridden by many factors, some of which apply specifically to television news, others which are at work across many media platforms. This section will look firstly at those hindrances to objectivity which affect television news before expanding in scope to look at more generic threats to objectivity and relating these to television.

1.1 - The specific constraints of television as a medium

Television news relies on a one-way flow of words and pictures to communicate with its audience. These words and pictures infer meanings, whether intended or not, which the audience interpret. The news, therefore, is not simply telling us what is already there but instead giving form and meaning to the experiences and ideas which are being relayed to the audience (Shoemaker, 1997; Bignell, 2002). Thus, when telling the audience the news, journalists are conveying meaning. In complex situations, when there are multiple points of view or facts, the report cannot express them all due to the time constraints of television news. Everyday there are a wealth of possible stories that can be selected for coverage in the news and each one of these can be looked at from multiple angles. While journalists will try to decide which stories are the most important for their audience (see section 1.3 below for details of how they do this) the lack of time available to them means that they have to lose objectivity, either by not covering a story at all or by limiting the number of view points expressed about a story. This means that in order to fit a report into the time allocated complete objectivity must be sacrificed.

1.2 - Commercialisation

Herman and Chomsky (1988) devised a five-stage filter or ‘propaganda model’ which explains why, instead of presenting an objective account of what is happening in the world, the mainstream media represent the ideology of the most powerful groups in society. The model is not perfect and has been criticised for not taking into account media effects (Klaehn, 2002). Still, the main thesis has been well supported by many others who have gathered further empirical evidence to illustrate the effects of these filters (Davis 2008; Edwards and Cromwell, 2006; Franklin, 1997; Keeble, 1997; Eldridge, 1993; Fowler 1991).

The first two of these filters concern the ownership and commercial structure of the media. Although Herman and Chomsky’s (1988) work is not directly relevant here - due to the ownership laws regarding terrestrial television in Britain - it is still a persuasive argument regarding the overall picture of media ownership and economic structure. Indeed, since their work was published media ownership has consolidated further. And, while this does not directly affect television news, there is a tendency for different organisations to follow agendas set by others (Davis, 2008; Vivian, 1998) meaning that television news cannot be analysed in isolation from other media forms. Therefore, as the number of owners shrinks the number of angles taken by media outlets shrinks.

Concentration of media ownership has also brought about a decrease in staffing levels while at the same time increasing output. This process has had a substantial impact on the role which journalists play resulting in less fact checking and an increased reliance on PR and the wire services both of which have decreased objectivity (Davis, 2008). Organisations have increasingly trained their press officers to write press releases in a journalistic style so that the distinction between work produced by journalists and public relations can be difficult to draw. At the same time the number of people employed in PR in both the public and private sector has increased dramatically (Davis, 2002; Franklin 1994). While much of the above has had a direct impact in the newspaper industry it has also had a knock-on effect on television news with Davis (2008) arguing that BBC news staff no longer have time to do their jobs properly and instead use PR and wire material thus losing objectivity.

The commercial nature of the majority of television stations in Britain has resulted in broadcasters valuing audience share and advertising revenue over content. Public service broadcasters have also come under increasing pressure to improve their audience share in order to justify their licence fee (Prinzing, 2008). As Moog and Sluyter-Betrao explain, the result has been an increase in infotainment:

‘In country after country, as competing national broadcasters merge information and entertainment formats in the pursuit of ever more elusive audience shares, they are increasingly subordinating political coverage to the imperatives of speed and spectacle, heightening the projection of personality and image over issue and idea.’
(2001, p.30)

This trend has had substantial impacts on objectivity. ‘Speed and spectacle’ have resulted in fewer sources being used in news items with less time for explanation and analysis. Furthermore, the increased use of personalities in news programmes has had two dramatic impacts. Firstly, as Bourdieu (1998) argues, it has led to serious investigative reports being pushed aside in favour of chat-show style programmes which, rather than focusing on ‘real information, analysis, in-depth interviews, expert discussions and serious documentaries [concentrate on] mindless talk show chatter between “approved” and interchangeable speakers’ (ibid, p.3) . Secondly, there has been an increase in the actual reporting of the lives of these personalities. These reports themselves may be objective but they cut into the time available to report on more serious news, therefore making news coverage less objective.

A further implication of commercial pressures has been the increased demand for deregulation of television. This has been evident most recently in the latest Ofcom report on public service broadcasting which proposed that ITV should be allowed to drop some regional news coverage and reduce its number of current affairs programmes (Sweeny, 2008). Again this reduces the number of facts and opinions transmitted through the media, resulting in less objective coverage.

1.3 - Journalistic Practices

To overcome time constraints journalists select the news which they will include in a broadcast and decide where to position it within the programme based on its perceived news value, a process that is theorised by the gatekeeping model which focuses on how individual editors and journalists influence news production. Fowler (1991, ch.2) explains the criteria first outlined by Galtung and Ruge (1973) which are used to decide an event’s news value. These criteria are: the duration of the event, the longer a process is the less likely it is to be reported; the size of the event, for example the more people that are killed in a car crash the higher the news value; how easy the event is to communicate, the easier the better; cultural proximity, if the event takes place in a culture similar to that of the audience it has a higher news value; consonance, which means that events which people hope will happen will have a higher news value; unexpectedness, events which are shocking will have a higher news value; continuity, events which have already been categorised as news will then be reported again in the future.

Although these criteria may seem sensible - and the purpose of this essay is not to criticise journalists for using them - they are not objectively applied by individuals as according to Breed they are not moral judgements made by independent individuals but are instead ‘learnt by osmosis’ (1997, p.109) in the newsroom. This process, therefore, removes individual journalistic objectivity and replaces it with an overarching set of values which are held at a corporate level so that the ‘gatekeepers’ all operate within similar ideological and professional frameworks. As Bignell elaborates:

‘Since journalists narrate news using the codes of news value in general and of their newspapers in particular, the news discourse which they produce cannot be the ‘natural’ way of understanding news or an ‘objective’ account of facts.’
(2002, p.86)

At an even earlier stage, those who will not comply with certain news values will be marginalised. Edwards and Cromwell (2006) suggest that journalists are generally honest and believe what they are saying but that the reason that they lose objectivity is due to the system that selects them. Noam Chomsky also expressed this view, in an interview with broadcaster and columnist Andrew Marr. ‘I don’t say you’re self-censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is, if you believed something different you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting’ (Chomsky, 1996 cited in Edwards and Cromwell, 2006, p.89) So, while journalists are technically free to say what they want, in reality if they held certain views many would not be working in mainstream media and those that do will absorb the company’s news values. Consequently, argues Fowler (1991), the events reported in the news are not chosen due to their importance but instead by the artificial set of criteria or news values. This means that news is a practice which rather than reflecting reality helps to create it.

Due to the number of events happening in the world and the even greater number of viewpoints that these events generate, news needs to be selected to fit within the constraints of television broadcasting. Television news, therefore, cannot be objective in the widest sense. If, however, we view objectivity as a scale, with information conveyed in the news as having varying degrees of objectivity, then it can be possible to be more or less objective. In this instance, the processes by which news is selected, the impacts of commercialisation and the concentration of media ownership have resulted in less objectivity within television news. Despite these numerous hindrances the existence of journalists who work against these controls must be acknowledged but in the face of the above factors their impact seems to be minimal.

Section 2 – The representation and reception of news: BBC News v Now Public

Having argued that complete objectivity can never be achieved by television news and that degrees of objectivity are threatened by commercial pressures, the following section will show how the impression of objectivity is represented by television news and how the Internet as a medium alters this process. In order to do this the theoretical frameworks of ‘Encoding/Decoding’ (Hall, 1980) and ‘Impression Management’ (Goffman, 1959) will be applied to television and Internet news.

2.1 – Television News

In his encoding/decoding model showing how media discourse is given meaning and how this affects the audience, Hall (1980) argued that when decoding television programmes the audience can take one of three positions. Firstly, they could take the dominant-hegemonic position; that being total acceptance of the intended meaning encoded by the programme makers. Secondly, they could take a negotiated position whereby they understand what the intended dominant meaning is but they also see some contradictions to it. Finally they could oppose the intended meaning and take the oppositional position.

As it is in the interest of journalists - both because, in most cases, they believe what they are saying and in terms of the success of the news broadcast – to induce the audience into taking the dominant-hegemonic or negotiated position journalists/programme makers encode or represent news in certain ways to decrease the chances of the audience taking the oppositional position. One of the ways in which that can be done is to encode the illusion of objectivity into the broadcast. The work of Goffman (1959) is helpful here in order to conceptualise how this is done. In his work the author divided impression management into three areas: the front region, the back region and the performance. The front region according to Goffman:

‘Is the expressive equipment of a standard kind intentionally or unwittingly employed by the individual during his performance… First there is the ‘setting’, involving furniture, décor, physical layout, and other background items which supply the scenery … [Secondly there is the] ‘personal front’ to refer to the other items of expressive equipment, the items that we most intimately identify with the performer [such as] insignia of office or rank; clothing; sex; age, and racial characteristics; size and looks; posture; speech patterns; facial expressions; bodily gestures.’
(1959, p.32-34)

In the front region of news - that is the television set, the presenters both on set and in reports, and those sets from outside broadcasts – objectivity is encoded through both visual and linguistic tools (some of these tools simply help to create the perception of objectivity whereas others actually result in more objective reporting). We can see these tools in an analysis of the BBC News at 10 broadcast which took place on November 14, 2008. Here Fiona Bruce, the newsreader, and the various reporters wore formal dress in an attempt to appear professional, serious and authoritative. At the same time they remained unemotional in their physical appearances and spoke in a calm and confident manner using impersonal language which created the impression of them as impartial, objective observers. This resulted in, for example, Bruce never using the pronoun ‘I’ or giving the impression of any opinion being expressed; either her own or that of the BBC. These linguistic styles may imply objectivity but this a myth because as Fowler has argued:

‘News is a representation of the world in language; because language is a semiotic code, it imposes a structure of values, social and economic in origin, on whatever is represented; and so inevitably news like every discourse, constructively patterns that of which it speaks. News is a representation in this sense of construction; it is not a value-free reflection of facts’
(1991, p.4)

Hence, when Nick Robinson reports from Washington (see table 1 in appendix) and in his report includes the views of five individuals he is not simply telling the audience the news. Instead he is really saying that these are the opinions which he thinks are salient and in this sense he is communicating a subjective value laden representation of the news.

The title sequence is a further attempt to create an impression of authority and objectivity. It does this through its use of loud and fast paced music along with the use of computer graphics which symbolise technological superiority. The picture of the globe symbolises a worldview again another indication of objectivity. All of these devices, unique to television news, create the impression of objectivity rather than helping to achieve it. Conversely, the use of multiple sources of information and different reporters giving information on the same news item not only creates an image of truth telling but also goes some way to making the programme objective by increasing the number of opinions expressed, although as has been shown above there is still some subjectivity in the selection process.

One of the secrets of successful impression management according to Goffman was to keep the processes of creating and managing the front region in a back region. The back region is defined as:

‘A place, relative to a given performance, where the impression fostered by the performance, is knowingly contradicted as a matter of course… It is here that the capacity of a performance to express something beyond itself may be painstakingly fabricated.’
(1959, p.114)

Thus, the back regions of television news are those areas off camera where editorial decisions are made. It is here that news values are used to select stories and sources, where decisions on how to angle stories and where audience ratings are discussed. In sum, this is the area whereby subjective judgements can be, and are, taken without destroying the audience’s perception of objectivity. The results of some of the decisions taken in the back region are evident when looking at the stories and sources covered in the programme.

During the news broadcast nine stories were reported with many of the stories using multiple sources. This fact, combined with the tools used in the front region discussed above, encodes the programme with the meaning of objectivity. There is, however, no indication of how the programme was constructed, why certain stories were used, why particular sources were used and not others and why the reporters and presenter used specific phrases and linguistic styles. These subjective factors are contained in the back region and thus to the un-questioning viewer remain secret and therefore the appearance of television news as being objective is successfully constructed although never truly achieved.

2.2 – Internet News

News on the Internet, whether generated by professional journalists or citizens, challenges the consensus often portrayed by the mainstream media by representing different viewpoints or by covering issues which the mainstream media fails to report. Open publishing - whereby anyone is allowed to post information onto a website, rather than using a journalist to select and package material – has the potential to communicate the experiences, observations and opinions of an infinite number of people (Ross and Nightingale, 2003). It also alters the flow of information from one-way to two-way allowing people to interact with the news by posting their own opinions or highlighting further sources of information about a given topic. We can see examples of this by examining the stories and sources present on the Now Public website at the same time as the BBC News broadcast analysed above.

News stories on the Now Public website were very different to those on BBC News with only one story covering the same topic. It also shows that fewer sources were used per story compared to BBC News. This would seem to suggest that Internet news is less objective. Unlike television news, though, it is difficult to conceptualise how news is represented on the Internet due to the diverse array of news sites available. This is one of the key characteristics of the Internet which distinguishes it from other forms of media and in so doing alters how audiences receive the news. There are, however, some key trends regarding the representation of news which are visible on the Internet in general, many of which are present on the Now Public website. Using Hall’s model outlined above the Internet devolves the encoding process away from the corporation to the individual producer. Furthermore, it creates multiple backstages. Although when reviewed as individual reports or as singular websites there is no indication that these are more objective, if we view the Internet as a whole then we can see that when compared to television news a more diverse set of encoders acting in individual rather than corporate backstages is evident. This means that while the reporting of Now Public can be no more objective than the BBC, Internet news as a whole, with its potential for thousands of websites, is.

Conclusion

Television news can never be completely objective. Due to the time constraints of the medium journalists are required to select stories and sources from the infinite number of possibilities. This process is done in a subjective way based on the journalist judging the story and sources against a set of subjective news values. The analysis above has also shown the negative impacts of commercial pressures, concentration of ownership and public relations on objective reporting. These factors directly oppose McQuail’s definition of objectivity given in section 1.

Due to the different ways in which Internet news – with its potentially unlimited number of encoders and back regions -is constructed and because the Internet has no time constraints this medium allows for a more objective representation of news. This is the case when assessing news on the Internet as a whole rather than on specific websites and from the above analysis of the Now Public website it may be the case that if people rely on a single website to receive news then they will have a less objective view of news.

The effects of Internet news on mainstream media and public opinion are much more contested and with more people using the Internet and new websites being developed, its effects are constantly changing. The Internet has the potential to generate audiences much larger than television, yet this audience, for the most part, will be fragmented. Consequently, in the short-term the impact of Internet news will always be less than that of television unless there is a consensus portrayed over multiple websites or when mainstream media replicate stories developed on the web.

As a consequence of objectivity not being encoded in the same way on the Internet as in television news and because many of the reports are compiled by non-professional journalists, many people are less trusting of news reported on websites which are not representations of mainstream media outlets. Thus, people are more likely to take Hall’s (1980) negotiated or oppositional view of Internet news when compared to television news. Furthermore, in an attempt to make sense of the information they access on the Internet and put it in context people may turn back to traditional sources of media. The future effect that the Internet will have on news reception as opposed to its potential, therefore, is not clear.

The most recent statistics show that 60% of adults use the Internet daily (Office of National Statistics, 2007) and 65% of households have Internet access (Office of National Statistics, 2008). The trends for both these figures indicate that they are likely to increase while at the same time newspaper sales are declining (Guardian, 2008). These trends would seem to suggest that the Internet as a medium for communicating news will become of increasing importance. Accordingly, the model of Internet representation and reception of news outlined above may come under treat as ‘it would be naïve to assume that powerful conglomerates will not protect their own interests as they enter this new media market place’ (Jenkins, 2002, p.157). As Internet audiences increase it may be the case that a further corporatisation of the Internet takes place and with it an attempt to create a corporate back region, front region and encoding process similar to that of television news. It is also the case, however, that audiences now have ‘greater power and autonomy as they enter into the new knowledge culture’ (ibid, p.158). It is these conflicting positions which may dominate the contest of how news is represented and received in the future.

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Debunking the economic myths of global warming

2008-12-17T11:58:00.005Z

For decades environmentalists have battled to convince politicians and the public that climate change is a real and present danger. Near scientific consensus, coupled with the fact that every mainstream political party now agrees that climate change is taking place and that it is caused by human activity, seems to suggest that this battle has been won. According to Frank Ackerman, however, global warming is now engulfed in a new fight, one that centres round its economics. The question we are faced with now is not whether we act but how do we act and more precisely how much money do we spend?

As part of Zed Books’ The New Economics - a series of books which seek to use a more human economics to provide a fresh way of looking at major issues - Ackerman’s latest book Can We Afford the Future? seeks to oppose economists such as Richard Mendelsohn, William Nordhouse and Richard Toll who argue that the costs of overly ambitious attempts to avert climate change outweigh the benefits. To this end the author is not concerned with the science of global warming or with a detailed estimation of the damage that it will do but instead focuses on whether substantial action makes economic sense.

The implicit assumption within economic theory that those proposing change require a higher burden of proof is, according to Ackerman, made redundant by the unprecedented risk of disastrous climate change. And, as he proceeds to pick apart those who follow this logic he seeks to ‘identify the mistaken assumptions that lead smart people to reach such wrong conclusions.’ Thus he states that: ‘we can, in fact, afford to create a liveable future, especially if we start immediately; the longer we wait, the more expensive and difficult it will become.’

A detailed plan of how to avoid climate catastrophe is beyond the 132 page scope of this book. Instead, Ackerman’s work will be of great interest to those who are concerned about environmental issues and wish to gain an understanding of their economic implications in order to advance their arguments in the face of those who seek to pursue the status quo. Inevitably, at times, the narrative gets bogged down in the jargon rich world of economic theory but the author takes his time to guide the novice along the way and, without diluting its argument, for the most part the book is easy to follow.

Ackerman sums up his argument with what he calls four simple car bumper stickers:

Your grandchildren’s lives are important
We need to buy insurance for the planet
Climate damages are too valuable to have prices
Some costs are better than others

These points may seem like common sense but many economic analyses fail to acknowledge them or give them their rightful importance. Armed with Ackerman’s work, however, environmentalists and the public will no longer have to rely solely on moral or subjective arguments - now they have an alternative and, Ackerman argues, more accurate economic model for tackling climate change.

Can we afford the future? The economics of a warming world by Frank Ackerman is published by Zed Books.

Windfall tax to tackle fuel poverty

2008-12-16T12:05:00.004Z

The behaviour of energy companies who are refusing to pass price cuts on to consumers, in spite of the sharp falls in the world price of crude oil, is of great concern to many.

Average annual spending on energy per household has breached £1,200 (since 2000 gas prices have risen 100% and electricity 61%, with further increases – on 30/07/08 British Gas announced record 35% gas price rises), correspondingly energy providers' profits have risen from £557 million in 2003 to over £5 billion today (similarly oil companies have announced huge windfall profits).

These companies are continuing to receive unearned profits at the expense of everyone. Furthermore the record price rises coupled with the refusal of companies to pass on cost cuts could increase those in fuel poverty beyond six million. This is utterly unacceptable.

Free market competition and current regulations are not producing any real competition between suppliers. Energy companies say that they need these huge prophets to invest in new, more environmentally friendly technologies, yet, so far, they have failed to do so.

In order to bring some justice to those facing huge bills Compass has re-launched the windfall tax campaign by tabling Early Day Motion 268 'Windfall Tax On Energy Companies'. Revenues from any windfall tax should be ring-fenced and targeted at homes in fuel poverty to give them immediate help and could also be used to start an adequately funded program of home insulation to protect people from inevitable future price rises. Some of the money could be made available as grants to both energy companies and individuals who want to invest in carbon free energy production or it could be used to make a contribution towards an integrated super conducting electricity grid that can simultaneously harness and distribute solar energy from northern Africa and offshore wind energy from Northern Scotland and other places. Lastly, any windfall tax could be done in such a way that companies who commit to lowering costs in line with drops in oil prices and to invest a certain percentage of their turnover in new technologies could avoid the tax. In such it would not be another revenue raising tax but a nudge to energy companies to do what is in the long term interests of the UK not their shareholders.

As Matti Kohonen and Francine Mestrum state in their new book Tax Justice: “It is largely a consequence of reactions to the Second Oil Shock in 1979 … that Denmark today manages to cover 25 per cent of its energy consumption with wind power. Public subsides paved the way with research and development, certification, testing and standardisation to build an industry with exports over $7 billion in 2007.” Similar investment had led to Germany producing 46 per cent of the world’s solar power and France producing 35 per cent of their energy through nuclear power. In the same way that state funding propped up the micro electronics industry in the US during its early, unprofitable years, so to can the UK government support green energy production. As economist Frank Ackerman says not only would this make sense morally, in the long term it would also make sense financially.

Click below to write to your MP and demand a fair price for your fuel.

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/

Military media propaganda

2008-11-13T11:15:00.003Z

‘The Vietnam War was complicated by factors that never before occurred in America’s conduct of war… More than ever before, television showed the terrible human suffering and sacrifice of war… raising questions whether America would ever again be able to fight an enemy abroad with unity and strength of purpose at home.’
(Nixon, 1978, p.50)

The ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ to which US President Richard Nixon was referring has largely been proven a myth (McLaughlin, 2002; Keeble, 1997; Herman and Chomsky, 1988) however, its perceived effect, especially in military circles, has helped shape government and military relations with the media during times of conflict ever since.

The following work will explore how, since the Vietnam War, information received by the mass media and conveyed to readers/viewers has been restricted, manipulated and censored by the military and government . I will argue that this cannot be seen as a simple, static strategy intended to safeguard those involved in the conflict but instead involves a plethora of ever-evolving policies implemented to increase the coverage of information favourable to the government, whilst hoping to stifle criticisms and inhibit journalists from revealing the realities of war.

The focus will be on conflicts involving the United Kingdom and the United States of America although many of the issues raised apply to conflicts involving countries from across the globe. No attempt will be made to assess the effects of media coverage on public opinion (other than to show that this is one of the objectives of the policies discussed) or to justify or criticise the governments involved.

Section one will explore the expansion of government public relations (PR) officers and how they are used to control media content. Although these policies were not devised solely for times of conflict, they nevertheless deserve analysis as they can be, and often are, utilised in times of war. The second section will look at techniques used to control the flow of information during times of conflict and will draw on examples from the Falklands (1982) and Gulf (1991 and 2003) conflicts to assess their intended impacts on media coverage. Section three will examine the impact of private military companies on the flow of information. The final section will access how successful these tools of information management were in controlling the media’s reporting of the 2007 ‘surge’ in Iraq by analysing the sources of the Times Online.

Section 1 – Media management through PR

Recent trends within the US and UK have seen a large expansion in the government’s use of PR officers (Davis, 2002; Franklin 1994). At the same time the media have become over-reliant on PR as a primary source of information. A report by Cardiff University (cited in Davis, 2008) studied 2,207 news articles in five UK newspapers concluding that 60% of the stories were comprised of material wholly or mainly supplied to them through PR. Although I agree with Davis (2008) and apportion most of the blame for this on commercial pressures and the concentration of media ownership, it would not have been possible without the expansion of PR by both private and public organisations, including the government.

In many cases ‘the most significant obstacle to defining where public relation ends and journalism begins is the fact that the two have become inextricably linked in a relationship that is largely invisible’ (Davis, 2002, p.27). While the author suggests this means that determining whether the expansion of PR has led to more PR produced news becomes impossible, I believe that a focused analysis of its impact in the build-up to the 2003 Iraq war illustrates how the government exploits the structural weaknesses of modern media in order to manipulate the news agenda through the use of PR.

Even if it can be proven that PR is responsible for an increasing amount of news another question emerges: what do journalists do with PR material? Do they simply repackage the same information or do they check facts, contact other sources and then evaluate the news value of what is being said? In response to government PR in recent wars the evidence points to the first rather than the latter being the case.

PR and press officers within the government seek to ‘establish close and mutually beneficial working relationships with journalists’ (Franklin, 1994, p.14). In the build-up to conflicts, I would argue, that the government uses this relationship to increase public support for their actions. This section will look at how government PR affected the media’s coverage of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Although this is just one example, and to conclusively determine the effects of PR in times of conflict would require a much broader study, it does highlight the potential impact of government PR.

Journalists interviewed in Davis (2002) claimed that even though they accepted that PR from many sources, not just government, was increasing, they were still in control of what went in their reports. More recent accounts (Davis, 2008; Edward and Cromwell, 2006; Tumber and Webster 2006) show how prior to the 2003 Iraq War this was not always the case. Although there is no evidence to conclusively prove that the government deliberately mislead the media and the press, in the end there were no WMD found in Iraq. Furthermore, there was significant evidence prior to the war that pointed to the fact that there were no WMD in Iraq. However, the government used its comprehensive PR machine to control the information released to the media and put forward the case that they believed there were WMD.

In 2002, as part of the evidence used to justify going to war, the UK government released a dossier containing information about Iraq’s weapons programme. Subsequently a draft of the document, written by the government’s director of communications John Williams, was released after a freedom of information request. The fact that much of this draft made it into the final report, which had been presented to the media as the work of intelligence agencies ‘demonstrates beyond doubt that the government's spin machine was at the heart of the process of drafting the dossier designed to persuade MPs and the British public of the case for war’ (Bright, 2008).

According to Edwards and Cromwell (2006) the media acted as a conduit for the views of the US and UK government. Thus, the overall impact of the government dossier concerning the WMD threat was that the ‘media expression of doubts about the existence of WMD [was] at best marginal in the pre-invasion phase, in all three nations' [UK, US and France] media systems’ (Palmer, 2004). More specifically 86% of television news reports in Britain assumed that Iraq had WMD (Davis, 2008). Therefore the government had successfully managed, through the use of PR, to convince the media that there were WMD in Iraq, thus helping to improve the amount of favourable coverage they received in the press.

Section 2

2.1 – The Falklands War (1982)

On April 2 1982 the Falklands War began when Argentina invaded the islands. This was the first opportunity for the UK government and military to learn from the perceived US mistakes in Vietnam and conduct a military operation accompanied with a successful media strategy.

Despite the military not wanting journalists to cover the conflict first hand, 29 correspondents and photographers were allowed to travel with the Royal Navy task force and these were divided into pools (McLaughlin, 2002). The logistical situation meant that these reporters were heavily reliant on the military who took advantage of the situation in order to restrict them from reporting certain aspects of the war. Firstly, in order to be part of the pools, and therefore to be able to report first hand on the conflict at all, journalists had to sign accreditation papers that ruled out certain topics for reporting. Furthermore, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) issued editors with more guidelines and briefed crewmembers on what they were allowed to discuss with the reporters on board. Harris (1983) cited in Carruthers (2000, p.124) highlights eight topics which were off limits: ‘speculation about possible future action; plans for operational capabilities and readiness of individual units; details about military techniques and tactics; logistical details; intelligence about Argentine forces; equipment capabilities and defects; and communications.’ The ambiguity of these topics meant that much of the information which journalists wanted to include in their reports was not allowed.

Journalists were compromised further by the fact that they had to rely on military personnel to transmit their copy back to London. This created two stages of verification where articles were subject to the possibility of censorship. Firstly, ‘it fell to the MoD’s civilian public relations officers … to strike offensive passages from their charges’ copy’ before transmitting it back to London ‘where [secondly] it was vetted again by press officers’ (Carruthers, 2000, p. 124). This process was open to further abuse and Carruthers (2000) claims that reports that contained critical comments about the war were often mislaid or delayed, a trend which was also discernable with regard to the speed which photographs arrived back in London.

To conclude, by limiting the number of reporters, dividing them into pools stationed aboard the British fleet and by ruling certain topics out of bounds the UK government, helped by the logistics of the conflict, carried out a successful if controversial operation in managing the information communicated by the media. The results were that the majority of reports in the mainstream media supported the military campaign. Despite the unplanned and often spontaneous policies the UK employed to manage the media during the Falklands War, the Pentagon viewed them as a successful way of controlling information and when plans were made to intervene in the Gulf they implemented and built upon several of them.

2.2 – The Gulf War (1991)

Keeble’s claim ‘that there was no war at all’ (1997, p.1) is controversial but the author does make the important distinction between ‘traditional militarism’ and ‘new militarism’. Differing from the industrial wars of the early twentieth century, conflicts are now fought by comparatively small, highly trained armies. Conflicts are often one sided with the superior force using powerful and technologically advanced weaponry, removing the need for a large mobilization of troops (Tumber and Webster, 2006; Keeble, 1997). Consequently, the majority of the population are no longer directly involved in conflicts, instead becoming voyeurs through the media. Manipulating the media is, therefore, central to government strategy allowing them to manage the perception of the conflict and mask the realities of the war zone.

The US and UK governments were quick to exploit the openings that these new militarist wars allowed. As they prepared the public for war, the US government’s attempts to control the flow of information started long before military action began. One technique they used was to frame the current conflict in terms of historical precedent. Thus, the Bush administration continually ‘explained Saddam Hussein’s behaviour by reference to Hitler’s aggression in 1930’s Europe … The importance of this framing of the Gulf crisis was not merely semantic. After all, the analogy dictated clear policy prescriptions’ (Carruthers, 2000, p. 40-41). Therefore, by defining the terms of the conflict the government was only allowing certain opinions to be discussed in the media, meaning that information which countered this was beyond the realms of acceptable debate.

During this conflict a comprehensive pooling system was implemented which saw journalists accompanied at all times and for the most part kept away from any combat scenes. The escorts also ‘reviewed press stories before transmission back to the press corps, if necessary passing them up to the military command for approval’ (Boyd-Barret. 2004, p.30). While the military claimed that there was no bias in the selection of journalists for the pools, the facts would seem to suggest otherwise. For example, Stars and Stripes, the independent newspaper owned by the Departemnt of Defense and produced for the US military had numerous reporters in the pools but the New York Times was only allowed one (Keeble, 1997). The use of pooling meant that journalists could only see the parts of the conflict which their military minders, instructed by their commanders, wanted them to see. Furthermore, as McLaughlin (2002) illustrates, by interviewing journalists who reported from the conflict, the pooling system fostered a competitive atmosphere between journalists from rival organisations. Consequently, in an effort to be selected, journalists censored their own work in order to curry favour with the military and ‘some went so far as to inform on other journalists such as Robert Fisk, who tried to operate outside the system’ (McLaughlin, 2000, p.90).

Those reporters not chosen to be in one of the pools were left to get their information at the military briefings held away from the conflict in Dhahran or Riyadh. Here they were exposed to military images and terminology such as ‘smart bombs’, ‘surgical strikes’ and ‘collateral damage’. These terms are among the many similar words which Collins and Glover refer to as a ‘sophisticated set of linguistic tools … [which the US uses] to manufacture broad-based consent and support for both domestic and foreign policies’ (2002, p.3). Such euphemisms and doublespeak were used to cloud the reality of the war, making sure that the public did not receive comprehensive details about the conflict. Moreover, Halliday (1999) argues that these briefings where littered with disinformation designed to boost approval for the coalition’s military action. These included claims, which were later proved to be false, about the use and success of the Patriot anti-missile shots; the number of Iraqi casualties; the suppression of stories of troops being killed by friendly fire; and the exaggeration of the size of the Iraqi army. Furthermore, these briefings, along with press releases, media appearances, press conferences and speeches from government officials in the US and UK, sought to encourage the development of common media frames (Robinson, 2004; Weston 2007). As one Los Angeles Times reporter commented ‘the first press conference of the day would be at 7.30 am. From then on you knew exactly what the line for the day was going to be. The script had been written beforehand and I felt like a reviewer of a good play or film’ (Keeble, 1997, p.110).

The US government responded to Central News Network’s (CNN) 24-hour satellite television coverage by developing more sophisticated methods of media manipulation. By pooling reporters in order to keep them away from the front line and carrying out controlled daily briefings complete with misleading language and videos they were able to, on the whole, successfully control what the media reported. It is also important here to concede that only five reports were referred to the Pentagon. While it could be argued that this shows that little censorship took place, I would suggest that it is an indication of how successful the above techniques were in only allowing information which the government deemed fit for publication to reach reporters.

2.3 – The Gulf War (2003)

With the success of the pooling system under threat from the development of new communication technologies the military needed to develop new ways of controlling the information conveyed by the media. Their answer was to embed reporters within the troops. Whereas previously journalists were divided into pools and kept away from the action, now they would be present with troops on the front line. At first look this policy seems to improve the chances of journalists producing accurate and unbiased reports based on firsthand accounts of the war. In practice, however, embedding proved to be an effective way, at least in the early stages of the war, in ensuring the media complied with and supported the military (Edwards and Cromwell, 2006; Tumber and Webster, 2006).

The process began even before war broke out with media training camps set up back in the US. Here the military began to assimilate the journalists into their routines and ways of thinking with participants gaining a better understanding of conflicts and respect for the military (DeFoore, 2002). Once embedded, journalists became so attached to the military that many began to feel at one. ‘We answer to the Commanding Officer, we follow orders, we share the rations, we eat where the soldiers eat and sleep where they sleep … We’re becoming indoctrinated and recognise the sights and sounds of army life instantly’ (Harrison and Qasr, 2003). Those unilaterals who chose not to be embedded and attempted to act independently by reporting from the enemy side were at best shunned by the coalition military and at worst risked being shot (Knightley, 2003). Consequently, with reporters fed selected information and made to feel part of the war effort, the government tried to shape the media coverage to suit their own needs.

The most recent research into the use of embedded reporters, however, shows that as the war progressed their compliance with the military waned. While the majority of journalists questioned admitted to feeling, at times, too close to their unit, they also seemed to have made conscious decisions to remain objective and were more impartial than those reporters who stayed away from the Middle East relying on press releases and wire copy. UK broadcasting laws, as much as government interference, would seem to have created the sanitised view of war which embedded journalists at times portrayed. Indeed, it maybe the case that it is not what embedded reporters are saying which is allowing the government to control the flow of information but what, by dominating the news coverage, they are stopping from being shown and discussed (Cardiff University School of Journalism, Media and Culture, 2008).

What emerges from various analyses of embedded reports is a complex picture. There appears to have been little or no direct censorship. Embedding, however, did foster a relationship between military personnel and reporters to a level which had not been seen in previous modern conflicts. Moreover, the government were able to control to some extent where journalists went and what they could see. This gave the government the opportunity to shape media coverage and alter the public’s perception of the war. It also helped to shutout other sources from the media. Journalists, though, were aware of the compromise they were making and many sought to remain impartial, although this proved hard in practice.

Section 3 – Private Military Contractors

While much of the criticism surrounding the use of private military contractors (PMCs) focuses on their ability to act without regulation from government, it can also be argued that they allow governments to cover-up operations and stifle the flow of information to the public. If, as Percy argues, ‘a citizen army restrains the state by making it more difficult for the state to engage in war’ (2007, p.18) then equally, by building on the concept of new militarism, the use of PMCs is removing the need for governments to justify the use of force in conflicts and limiting the flow of information to the general population.

The use of PMCs is increasing and is actively encouraged by governments such as the US where their ratio of contractors to active-duty personnel during the 1991 Gulf War was 1 to 50 but in the 2003 Gulf War it was 1 to 10. (Avant, 2004). This gives a strong indication that PMCs benefit the government and one of these benefits is the increased control it gives them over information.

Although there is no empirical evidence to show whether PMCs are likely to engage in misconduct (Lehnardt, 2007) and when they do, such as in the case of Abu Ghraib , they can be exposed in the media is not important here. The key is that although the information may get out, the impacts of it can be controlled by the military through their ability to deny their own culpability. As Lehnardt argues, ‘if PMCs are a convenient tool to pursue foreign policy ends without the appearance of state involvement, the incentive for states to use PMCs to circumvent international obligations or to share the costs of abiding by them is apparent’ (2007, p.140). The way in which they do this is, firstly, to conceal information and then, secondly, to allow revelations which may reflect badly on the state to be distanced from the state.

Section 4 – ‘The Surge’

Much of the above has focused on the successes of government information management in the early stages of conflicts or in conflicts which were short. The following will now look at how the government’s ability to control the flow of information is affected when conflicts continue significantly longer than they were originally expected to.

The 2003 Iraq War may have officially ended but the conflict still continues. On 10 January 2007 George W. Bush announced his government’s plans to increase the number of troops deployed in Iraq (Bush, 2007). In order to see the extent to which the government was able to control the information available to the media I have carried out an analysis of the sources used in the reporting of the ‘surge’ by the Times Online .

The reporting by the Times Online was sourced from multiple organisations with differing views. I would tentatively suggest that this shows a failure in this case of the US government to manage the flow of information making it into the press about the new ‘surge’ strategy. It is clear, however, that despite the number of sources the most common by a large majority are the two US political parties. This shows that politicians were successful in getting their opinions in the media. Since the 2003 Iraq War started, however, their opinions have become more divided; even people within the Bush administration and the wider Republican Party did not support the plan. Furthermore, in that time public opinion had turned against the war, therefore journalists became more confident about criticising the conflict and subverting the government in order to find their own sources of information.

Conclusion

Despite the thorough and diverse attempts by governments to control the flow of information they are reliant in some degree on the compliance of the media. The above analysis of the reporting of the 2007 troop ‘surge’ shows that when the media breaks ranks, or when official sources differ in opinion the government can struggle to control what is reported. Therefore, while the focus of this essay has been to examine the ways in which governments operate in times of conflict it is also important to acknowledge the role that the media play. The mainstream media are closely tied to the state through similar economic and political interests, without which it could be argued that all of the above policies of information manipulation would be useless.

An inquiry into the media-military relations after the Falklands War found that censorship and propaganda were justified when concealing information from the enemy. Similar justifications have been used by the UK and US governments throughout the history of modern warfare (McLaughlin, 2002; Thrall, 2000). This essay has shown, however, that government information management has been far more complex. Many of the techniques illustrated above have had no impact on concealing sensitive information from the enemy. Instead they have sought to increase the likelihood of favourable coverage by restricting access to and manipulating information. Indeed, exacerbated by the actions discussed above, studies have identified the UK and the US to be some of the most secretive states in the developed world (Northmore cited in Keeble, 1997; Reporters Without Borders, 2008).

What has also been clear is the flexibility of government policy which has changed dramatically in order to meet the demands posed by new technology. 24-hour news coverage bought expanded media pooling and detailed press briefings; more mobile broadcasting equipment resulted in the government embedding reporters; the development of oppositional news corporations, such as Al Jazeera, drew political flack. With the increasingly uncontrollable globalisation of media and with the internet escalating the proliferation of alternative views the next conflict will require a further - and possibly more difficult - evolution of government information management.

References

Avant, D., 2004. The Privatisation of Security and Change in the Control of Forces. International Studies Perspectives, [Online]. 5 (2), p. 153-7.
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Bush, G.W., 2007. President's Address to the Nation. [internet]. 10 January. Available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070110-7.html [Accessed 29 October 2008].

Boyd-Barret, O., 2004. Understanding the Second Casualty. In S. Allen and B. Zelizer, eds. Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime. Oxford: Routledge. Ch. 1.

Bright, M., 2008. The truth is more tawdry than the lies. Newstatesman, [internet]. 21 February. Available at: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/martin-bright/2008/02/williams-draft-iraq-dossier [Accessed 28 October 2008].

Cardiff University School of Journalism, Media and Culture, 2008. To Close For Comfort? The Role of Embedded Reporting During the 2003 Iraq War. Cardiff: Cardiff University.

Carruthers, S., 2000. The Media at War. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Collins, J. and Glover, R. eds., 2002. Collateral Language. New York: New York University Press.

Davis, A., 2002. Public Relations Democracy. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Davies, N., 2008. Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media. London: Chatto and Windus.

DeFoore, J., 2002. Access Vs. Independence: Thoughts on Media Boot Camp. Photo District News, [internet] 11 December. Available at: http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/esearch/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1992119 [Accessed 16 October 2008].

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Halliday, F., 1999. Manipulation and Limits: Media Coverage of the Gulf War, 1990-91. In T.Allen and J. Seaton, eds. The Media of Conflict: War Reporting and Representations of Ethnic Violence. London: Zed Books. Ch. 6.

Harrison, K. and Qasr, U., 2003. War Reporting: Diary of a Journalist with the Army. Times Online, [internet] 24 March. Available at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/specials/article1122842.ece [Accessed 21 October 2008].

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McLaughlin, G., 2002. The War Correspondent. London: Pluto Press.

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Weston, D. 2007. The Political Brain. New York: Public Affairs.

Support opt-out organ donation to save lives

2008-10-24T11:22:00.005+01:00

In January this year Gordon Brown said he wanted a national debate on whether to alter the system of organ donation. He wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that a system of presumed consent could make a huge difference. He was right.

Since then progress has been slow. Over recent years there have been some welcome endorsements of an opt-out policy, whereby people’s consent is assumed unless they say otherwise.

Last year the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, published a report in which he called for legislation to be amended to create an opt-out scheme. Following on from this the Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, asked the Organ Donation Taskforce to evaluate the impact of a presumed consent system. Their report will be published later this year but everyday they delay more people are needlessly dying.

And while the government stalls things continue to get worse. The number of patients waiting for an organ is increasing ever year but the number of donors is not keeping up. Consequently the latest figures show that there are 7,655 patients waiting for a transplant. One in ten people waiting for a heart transplant will die.

In order to meet demands the NHS Organ Donation Register would need to have around 35 million people on it. While there are other ways of raising donor numbers, the only way to achieve anything approaching this number is an opt-out scheme. In Spain, where such as scheme is in operation, there are nearly three times as many people on the register as a percentage of the total population.

Presumed consent is also the best way of acting on the patients’ wishes. Over 70% of the population are in favour of donating their organs but only 20% sign up.

Even the new bible for the Torries – Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s book about how ‘choice architecture’ can be used to nudge people in the right direction – preaches the virtues of an opt-out system. Although no high ranking Conservative would openly admit to wanting such a system and they are unlikely to bring one in. This makes it even more important that Brown stops dithering.

To make sure he knows that public opinion is behind him and to back an opt-out system for organ donation sign the petition below.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/opt-out/

To register as an organ donor click below.

http://www.uktransplant.org.uk/ukt/how_to_become_a_donor/how_to_become_a_donor.jsp

To buy a copy of Nudge click below.

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

New video starts the fight against 42 days

2008-10-13T10:01:00.013+01:00

This autumn the UK government wants to push through a Bill allowing police to lock people up for 42 days without charge if they are suspected of a terrorism-related offence.

Amnesty is concerned that civil liberties are still under attack in the Counter-terrorism Bill and warns that people in the UK may be sleepwalking into an assault on their basic human rights. Political rumours that the plans will be dropped cannot be relied upon and the 42-day proposals must be defeated once and for all.

42 days - don't sleepwalk into it.

The only way to convince MPs to take a stand against 42 days is to show them how many of their constituents are against this unnecessary and counter-productive piece of legislation. Click here to sign the petition today.

Serious times call for serious publications

2008-09-25T13:07:00.002+01:00

Gordon Brown began his speech to the Labour Party conference defending his serious approach to politics, “quite honestly there's a lot to be serious about,” he said. It seems that the public agrees. The latest figures of magazine sales show that titles such at the Economist (year-on-year rise of 5.6%), Prospect (+10.7%) and the Spectator are increasing their readership while lightweight titles such as Nuts (-9.8%), FHM (-10%) and Closer (-7.5%) are shedding readers.

John Micklethwait, the editor of the Economist, told media Guardian this week that: “There's a bigger top end of the market than people think, and it's not just to do with magazines. If you look at the number of people going to art galleries, or buying relatively serious books, or watching serious television - like House, or Tess of the D'Urbervilles - something is up. What seems to be happening is twofold: a massive thirst for ideas and insight, and another thing that's more sociological.

“I think that the world used to bifurcate between people who took things very seriously and watched East German films and wore black polonecks, and another group of people who went in for mass popular culture: football matches, say, and light entertainment on TV. That's all changing now. Not so long ago, I met someone who was going to a Millwall game, and then going to see The Lives of Others in the evening. And there was nothing odd about that at all.”

The sales numbers, however, are yet to be reflected in the figures of broadsheet papers, which continue to fall. What Micklethwait failed to mention was that people maybe turning to publications such as his because they don’t just want to know what’s going on. They also want to know why it’s happening, how it will impact on their lives and what they can do to cope. They don’t want news; they want analysis.

The twenty-four hour news cycle doesn’t lend itself to in-depth analysis and it’s a difficult balancing act for an editor as to how much comment and analysis to use. One answer maybe for newspapers to become more like magazines, with the latest news appearing online, where it can be updated throughout the day, and analysis appearing in the printed paper. It is already rumored that the Independent on Sunday maybe considering such a move, they have little to lose but other papers may soon be saying the same.

Brown was right, there is a lot to be serious about. Not only for governments but also for newspapers. The latest sales figures could provide them with a way out but change doesn’t come easily.

Take action now to stop your money bailing out the banks

2008-09-23T13:19:00.002+01:00

With American government on the cusp of bailing out Wall Street with taxpayers’ money, it is time for those whose money it is to make their voices heard.

Writing in the Asian Times, Otto Spengler argued that this is ‘a subsidy to private banks, administered at the whim of the Treasury Secretary, without oversight and without the possibility of legal recourse.’

President Bush and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson say that it is necessary but the truth is that it is not in the interests of the general population.

In her latest column, author and journalist Naomi Klein calls for people to organise resistance to the current plan before it is too late. ‘I wrote ‘The Shock Doctrine’ in the hopes that it would make us all better prepared for the next big shock. Well, that shock has certainly arrived, along with gloves-off attempts to use it to push through radical pro-corporate policies.

‘If you have read the book, you know that this is precisely the kind of moment in which we stand to lose (or gain) it all. If we are slow, the radical changes will be locked in; if the Bush Administration gets its way, the actions taken this week will not be subject to repeal or to any legal challenge. So write letters to the editor, call your elected representatives, contact the Obama campaign, and let them know: the way to solve a crisis born of deregulated capitalism is not with more gifts and giveaways for Wall Street!’

To read the rest of Naomi’s column click this link:

http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008/09/now-time-resist-wall-streets-shock-doctrine

The elderly have the right to work if they want

2008-09-23T13:02:00.001+01:00

With people living longer and physically able to continue working past the current age for retirement, a more flexible approach is needed by government and employers.

Yet a challenge to the right of employers to make people retire at 65 has been rejected by a European court adviser. And while the view is not a binding decision it may influence the judges ruling due to be made later this year.

Age Concern has been challenging UK law, which since 2006 has allowed employers to force workers to retire at 65. Not only does it discriminate on the grounds of age, it also leads to many poorer people being forced to live off their pension, which for some is not adequate.

Current laws are weighed in favour of employers. Although people can ask to work past the age of 65, and more than a million do, the decision rests with their employer.

The most recent statistics show that someone who is currently 65 can expect to live for another 17 years if they are male and 20 years if they are female. Projections show that life expectancies will increase by a further three years by 2020. This is not sustainable.

Not only should people be allowed to carry on working at 65, it should be their right to do so unless they are physically or mentally unable. The current arbitrary age of retirement is not linked to life expectancy and the time is approaching where the government will need to consider increasing the age at which people retire. Supporting Age Concern’s plans would help to start the process.

An essential guide to understanding power

2008-09-18T14:44:00.003+01:00

Spanning 10 years of discussions, debates and activism ‘Understanding Power’ is a written account of a series of talks given by Noam Chomsky, looking at such wide-ranging topics as the pacifying effect of spectator sports to religious fanaticism.

Structured throughout in a question and answer format, the book exposes the various ways in which powerful elites exploit the general population and how the various institutions – such as universities, the media and corporations – are complicit in the process.

Chomsky’s ability to retain and analyse copious amounts of statistics, facts and scholarly work are brought to the fore, as he systematically reveals what he sees as the true intentions and reasons behind the actions of the powerful.

When talking about the media and their framing of words and actions Chomsky is at his most insightful and convincing as his work on the ‘propaganda model shows. Twenty years later and many of his observations about the media still hold true: ‘just take the “peace process”, which we hear all the time. The phrase “peace process” has a dictionary meaning, it means “process leading to peace.” But that’s not the way it’s used in the media. The term “peace process” is used in the media to refer to whatever the United States happens to be doing at the moment.’ Chomsky then goes on to list some of the occasions when the United States has opposed a peace process but finds that these were never reported.

Not many escape his critical eye, from Marxism – ‘if you set up the idea of Marxism, you’ve already abandoned rationality’ to Neo-liberalism – ‘doesn’t have any more validity than it had in the early nineteenth century.’

As for a different way of living, Chomsky’s proposals are much more abstract. He describes the form of libertarian socialism practised in Barcelona in the late 1930's as ‘about as high a level as human beings have reached in trying to reach libertarian principles, which In my view are the right ones.’ Repeatedly Chomsky returns to the need for organised resistance to counter the damaging effect of all forms of undemocratic power, calling for the readers to empower themselves.

This book is essential reading for those who want to develop a critical mind and the ability to subvert the propaganda spewed froth by those in power.

Click here to purchase 'Understanding Power'

Media exacerbates misconceptions of poverty

2008-09-15T14:23:00.001+01:00

Many studies have tried to quantify the media’s influence on public opinion, most frequently when it comes to voting trends. A new study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has taken this one step further and analysed how the media shapes the publics attitudes towards a single issue: poverty in the UK.

The report found that ‘on the whole, coverage of poverty is a peripheral item in newspapers, news magazines, radio and TV news… It is not so much the case that poverty per se is absent from the UK mass media, rather that it is rarely explored directly and critically.’

Furthermore, the authors found that the concept of poverty was framed in a way which led to a less progressive understanding and the blaming of the victim rather than an examination of the causes. This lack of detail left the audience to ‘draw on their existing frameworks of understanding to make sense of the issue … The key problem of contemporary media is their tendency to marginalise accounts of poverty that challenge existing suppositions.’

If the government want to increase the success of their anti-poverty initiatives they need to further public understanding and support, yet the current media climate does entirely the opposite. The JRF report concluded that ‘were the media to find ways to challenge people’s selective misperceptions of poverty in the UK, then this could be the most effective means to gather public support for anti-poverty initiatives.’

The other key findings of the report were:

- Non-news broadcasts rarely mentioned poverty, although they often featured those experiencing deprivation. Coverage tended to focus on extreme cases, highlighting the inherent ‘failings’ of undeserving people. Some documentaries explored the inequities of poverty and complex circumstances of those experiencing it, but reached limited audiences.

- In news media, poverty in the developing world received as much coverage as poverty in the UK, but was reported differently. Depictions of extreme poverty outside the UK correspond with and may influence how the public perceive and define poverty.

- The campaigning sector contributes to keeping UK poverty in the news and is valued by media professionals as a source of comment and a means to access people experiencing poverty. Campaigners recognise that they could be more proactive in generating and promoting coverage of under-reported aspects of poverty. See a list of related documents.

To read a full copy of the report go to the JRF website by clicking the link below:

http://www.jrf.org.uk/bookshop/details.asp?pubID=976

Moving to the corporate position

2008-09-11T20:10:00.007+01:00

The contest for the political centre ground is well documented. We can all see it taking place as the differences between the parties become blurred. Yet with millions of people living in the UK what is the centre ground?

It is often referred to as ‘middle England’ while others see it as the consensus of public opinion, where the left and the right meet. These terms, however, are not borne out in reality. The majority of moves to the centre are really moves to the corporate position. This has resulted in policies which often go against the public consensus being categorised as in the centre ground, while policies which are supported by most of the population and are in their interest are labelled as extreme.

As Labour moved to the right they embraced deregulation of financial markets, privatisation of public services, centralisation to London and lower taxes for businesses and the wealthiest paid for by higher taxation for the rest. Recently, despite overwhelming public support and demands from their own MP’s, the government has not implemented a windfall tax on energy firms. When Northern Rock needed bailing out suddenly nationalisation wasn’t the terrible term which it had been for the previous 10 years. All of these policies and many more were designed to help corporations. As Neal Lawson, director of Compass, wrote in the Newstatesman: ‘new Labour inverted the principle of social democracy: Labour governments would no longer try to make society the master of the market; it would make society its servant.’

While all of this has been happening the Conservatives have also been moving into the so-called centre ground. The Tories have always been a party supporting the interests of the rich but under David Cameron they are seen as moving to left and now claim to be the “party of the poor”. Many of these changes, however, are also subtly helpful to large corporations. They are now in favour of the EU and controlled immigration based on skills brought to the job market, whereas before many Tories wanted out of the EU and very limited immigration. This change is not because they want to help migrants; instead it boosts cheap labour and increases the number of consumers. They appear to be in favour of high levels of investment in public services, a stark contrast to their position when they were last in power. However, as private companies are increasingly being contracted to deliver services traditionally provided by the public sector, this is also helpful to big businesses allowing them to benefit from state funding.

The true reflection of the centre ground according to recent YouGov polls is that 67% of people support a windfall tax on energy companies; 78% think that there are already too many immigrants in the UK; 64% feel that London has too much power; 89% think that political leaders should do what the majority want; only 7% think that the balance of tax between rich and poor is correct. Whilst public opinion is malleable and not always correct, some of these positions make up what is the true centre ground. Yet none of them are in the interests of corporations hence the lack of support for them from political parties.

A report by Media Lens published this week highlighted another area where what is now considered a central issue – environmental policy – is being distorted by corporate interests. It wasn’t long ago that being green was seen as the idealism of the radical left but now, as the dangers of climate change become evermore apparent, every party boasts about its green credentials. The difference between now and the idealism of the past is that now there is money to be made.

The report said that senior UK government advisor, Professor Bob Watson’s ‘response to his own dire warning to prepare for a 4C rise was to call for the UK to take a lead in research on carbon capture and storage (CCS). This would require an “Apollo-type programme” akin to the huge resources devoted by the US in the 1960s space race.

‘As indicated by its rapidly escalating media profile, CCS has been hyped into the foreground with serious discussion of alternative measures, policies and ideas left trailing in its wake. Corporate energy chiefs have pushed CCS hard, a greenwashing strategy to protect business interests, profits and power.

‘But consider the extent of the hype. A recent report from Corporate Watch warns that CCS technology is unlikely to be proven, scaled up and in widespread use until 2030 at the earliest, and possibly not until 2050 - too late to prevent climate chaos.’

With so much profit at stake energy companies will be lobbying politicians of all parties. They don’t want to see a strategy of decreasing energy use, improving efficiency, personal energy generation, expansion of renewables which produce lower profits, better public transport and higher taxes on fossil fuels. They want CCS (with research expenses subsidised by the state), more drilling, and more nuclear power plants. When the next energy policies are revealed they will be presented as policies of the centre, for ‘middle England’ and backed by public consensus. If they follow the majority of policy changes, though, they are likely to be made with one group’s interests at heart: corporations.

While the government is responding to the pressure exerted by corporations there is still the chance that others will be listened to. Once these corporate ideals become institutionalised, however, it will be too late. Noam Chomsky’s and Edward Herman’s propaganda model showed why the American media is a conduit for corporate power due to the fact that it is owned by some of America’s largest companies. In his book ‘The Triumph of the Political Class’, journalist Peter Oborne shows how government departments and the highest levels of the civil service have been taken over by people employed by large financial companies in the City. ‘At the same time the private equity industry has injected millions of pounds’ worth of donations not just into the governing Labour Party but into the Conservative opposition. Both parties give important public support to the very controversial private equity movement.’

Speaking about the book Oborne said: “Jeremy Heywood is a fascinating figure actually, the private secretary to the prime minister [Tony Blair] and now under Brown. In the three years between he hopped over to Morgan Stanley and arranged privatisation with the Treasury. A classic case of the debasement of our public domain and capture of our civil service super-rich American bankers.”

Once political parties are made up of people from large City companies and receive large amounts of funding from super-rich individuals they will, in a similar way to the ‘Propaganda Model’, become conduits for the ideals of the rich and powerful. This process, as Oborne illustrates, is well underway.

Currently no party represents the consensus of public opinion or acts for the benefit of the majority while protecting vulnerable groups. Moving to the centre ground has become a euphemism for their subservience to corporate power at the expense of the general population.

The full Media Lens report can be accessed here: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/080909_hawking_the_technofix.php

Click here to purchase Peter Oborne's book 'The Triumph of the Political Class'

Click here to purchase Chomsky and Herman's Manufacturing Consent

New campaign to stop the detention of children

2008-09-09T16:27:00.002+01:00

Every year in the UK around 2,000 children are detained in immigration detention centres because their parents have applied for asylum. These children are innocent of any crime and on arriving in a new country, often unaware of what is going on, experience traumatic and damaging treatment. Some have even been living in the UK for years and are fully integrated members of society who are then abruptly removed and detained.

This week the New Statesman magazine launched its 'No Place for Children' campaign calling for the British government to stop the detention of children for immigration reasons.

The campaign calls for: ‘Better independent oversight of the system; Accurate records to be kept of all children in the immigration detention system; Welfare assessments to be made of all children on entry into detention; Reason for detention and reviews to be given to parents in their own language.’

In the next month the campaign will tell the story of those effected and highlight the possible alternatives. There will also be an online petition on the magazine’s website.

Sir Al Aynsley-Green, children’s commissioner for England, writes: ‘It is shameful that UK law allows children who are not British to be detained without time limits and without judicial oversight… The UK has one of the worst records in Europe for detaining children… Yet despite such stringent criticism, the government has remained largely impervious to the devastating effects of detention on children.’

“We didn’t have time to collect anything and we don’t have any personal belongings, clothes or anything. They even take your phone,” said an 11 year old in Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre.

To find out more about the current situation and join the campaign click on the link below.

http://www.newstatesman.com/subjects/no-place-for-children

Demand NO War NO Warming at DNC & RNC

2008-08-27T12:53:00.009+01:00

With the national convention of the Democratic party underway and the Republican convention soon to follow Global exchange, along with Code Pink and United for Peace and Justice, are calling on all those who want to see a change to the Untied States’ foreign and energy policies to make a stand.

Their campaign states: ‘During the next month all of America will tune into the DNC and RNC conventions, where the groundwork will be laid for how our nation tackles issues that will affect the health and safety of our communities for generations to come. Now, more than ever, the U.S. needs to become a leading partner to achieve true peace and fight against global warming and climate change.

‘Join us in holding our candidates and parties accountable, and ensuring that they act on behalf of the people rather than on behalf of corporate interests. This is our chance to see that the NO War NO Warming message pushes our nation to act on a vision that leads the world towards a peaceful, secure and green future.’

Their NO War NO Warming platform is a s follows:

Withdraw all U.S. troops and military contractors from Iraq.

Invest in a clean energy economy—public transit, ultra-efficient vehicles and renewable energy.

Respect international law and the sovereignty of other nations.

Re-engage as a leader in the international community, contribute to a global solution to global warming.

Move from unilateralism and pre-emptive strikes to international cooperation and diplomacy. Start with Iran.

Take dirty money out of politics, placing voters ahead of corporate and dirty energy interests.

End torture, respect human rights, and restore habeas corpus.

Replace "free trade" agreements with fair trade deals with other countries that protect workers' rights and the environment.

Implement humane and comprehensive immigration reform that affirms the dignity and integrity of immigrant families.

Promote an equitable peace plan between Israel and Palestine.

Whether you’re a US citizen or not the policies of the next administration will have profound impacts worldwide. Take action now by following the link below.

http://www.globalexchange.org/war_peace_democracy/2008conventions.html

While many people think that electing Barack Obama will result in a change of policy, that may not be the case. Toady’s report by Democracy Now highlights some concerns over Obama’s foreign policy team. It is, therefore, important to avoid complacency and continue to campaign and lobby Democratic party members.

Reporting from the convention, Democracy Now correspondent Jeremy Scahill quizzed some of the party members about Obama’s foreign policy team.

In his report he said: “While Obama has campaigned on a pledge to end the Iraq war, an examination of his top foreign policy advisers is raising concern amongst some in the antiwar movement. That’s because several of the key people who are advising Obama on foreign policy were at the center of some of the most violent actions of the Clinton administration in the 1990s. There are also several who promoted the myth that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

“Among the old guard Clinton era players on Obama’s foreign policy team are former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher; former National Security Adviser Tony Lake; former Defense Secretary William Perry; former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, General Wesley Clark; and former Assistant Secretary of State Susan Rice—not to mention Joe Biden, who was the chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the Bush administration was pushing to invade Iraq.”

Not the message of change that is the theme of Obama’s campaign.

As Scahill quizzed those present at the convention most remained on message denying that there are any concerns over Obama’s team.

Dennis Kucinich, who ran against Obama for the nomination said: “Well, I still oppose them [members of the party who where key advisors during Bill Clinton’s presidency and backed the war in Iraq] but I’m going to work to get Barack Obama elected, because we have to take a new direction. Unless we shift away from the neocons and their control, we’re looking at more war. No question about it.

“Be certain that under a Democratic administration, if that administration is showing aggressive tendencies or is putting us on the edge of a war again or not taking us into a direction of peace, I am not going to be quiet. I mean, I’m going to continue to talk about the direction America should go in. But we can’t let those differences that we have right now cause us to fracture at a time that we really have to bring a change to the White House.”

Due to the pressure that will be put on Obama, both from inside his own party and from corporate lobbyists, it is important that people who want to see a real change continue to campaign for new policy direction. Supporting the work of Global Exchange, Code Pink National and

You can read or listen to Scahill’s report in full at the link below.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/26/jeremy_scahill_grills_democratic_lawmakers_on

Choice - not all it's made out to be

2008-08-21T11:46:00.005+01:00

Buzzwords abound in the rhetoric of politicians and nevermore so than when the talk is of public sector reform. Of the current phrases spewing forth ‘choice’ and ‘empowerment’ are two of the favourites but whose choice and whose empowerment? And while MP’s try to frame these words as synonyms of ‘public benefit’, is choice always a good thing?

Health and education are the main areas where politicians see choice as the best way of improving services. Choosing where and what treatment to have and which school to send your children to are policies which both the Labour and Conservative parties are pursuing. This year’s Darzi review made patients’ rights the focus of change, proposing that patients’ views on the quality of care should have an impact on future funding, with bonuses for those GPs and hospitals providing the best services. Furthermore, the results of patient satisfaction should be published creating a form of NHS league table allowing patients to choose at which GP or hospital they wish to receive their treatment.

Parents are continually told that by being able to choose which school to send their children to they are getting a better deal from state education. Government ministers eulogise choice as the best way to match a child’s educational needs to the school which is best placed to cater for them.

Choice as prescribed by this government, however, leads to centralisation, destruction of communities, privatisation and the marginalisation of the poorest from the process. Their legacy of choice will be less choice.

Polyclinics are a perfect example of this. Patients are told that these super-surgeries will lead to more choice but one key choice will be removed: the choice to go to your community hospital or GP. Elderly patients, who frequently need to seek medical advice, will see their relationships with their doctor destroyed and will be forced to travel impractical distances.

NHS league tables, while appearing to increase patient choice, are in reality just another way of imposing more targets. Moreover, if patients do utilize them to make decisions about which hospital to go to they will find that choice is removed. A hospital which scores poorly in the table will receive less funding, therefore their results will get worse and fewer patients will choose them. As this spiral continues services will have to be closed down as they will no longer be efficient and then you no longer have a choice.

Choices can also be confusing, stressful and in the end you can always make the wrong one. When it comes to medicine my knowledge is possibly not as comprehensive as that of a qualified and experienced practitioner. I would, therefore, rather know that all hospitals and surgeries are clean and friendly and then allow my GP to refer me to the nearest one where I could receive the required treatment.

The government's promise to give every parent a choice of secondary school for their child was proved a myth again this year with figures showing the number of pupils getting their first choice of school has dropped. As parents understandably clamor to get their children in to schools high up the league tables the idea of going to your local school is becoming a nostalgic notion, with over half of children not going to their nearest school.

Commuting to school is detrimental to community development and the environment. Worse still any benefits of the current policy are going to the wealthiest. A report by Bristol University found that disadvantaged families miss out in the current system and even in the same postcodes poorer families end up at the lower-performing schools. Expanding the better performing schools may not be possible as “giving popular schools the freedom to expand does not mean they will do so. To the extent that a school's position in the league tables depends on the attainment of its intake, schools may be unwilling to increase and potentially to dilute the quality of their student body,” said Professor Burgess.

Whilst ‘good’ schools cream off the best pupils the rest are left with lower league table results and less people ‘choosing’ to go there. Some of the best teachers may leave and in worse case scenarios the school maybe closed. As with hospitals the choice is then removed. Furthermore, expanding the best schools and shrinking or closing the rest as suggested will result in huge institutions where education suffers. American researchers are leading the way in analysing the impacts of school size. Craig Howley, of Ohio University, and Robert Bickel, of Marshall University, looked at whether smaller schools could reduce the negative effects of poverty on student achievement. They found that the correlation between poverty and low achievement was ten times stronger in larger schools than in smaller ones. “Everyone knows that there is a strong association between social class and achievement and that this association works very much to the disadvantage of economically disadvantaged students,” Bickel told Education World. “The California research, however, had the virtue of demonstrating that this disadvantage was exaggerated as school size increased.”

One in seven pupils in England are now in a secondary school with over 1,500 students and the number of pupils in schools of over 2,000 has doubled since 1997. Promoting choice is driving these figures ever higher.

If you thought a change of government would bring about a change of direction then, like in most areas, the differences between Labour and the Conservatives are negligible. In a letter this week to local residents, Philip Dunne, Conservative MP for South Shropshire wrote: ‘We believe that the best way to enhance the power of patients is through choice. We will allow patients to choose, in consultation with their GP, where they get their secondary care. And we will ensure that money follows the patient so that hospitals and clinics and other care providers are paid according to the results they deliver for that patient.’ Once again, it seems, Labour equals Conservative and the public is left without an alternative.

When ministers speak of choice what they really mean is installing the practice of privatised competition in the public sector. Not even the most ardent free-market Tory would openly pursue a fully privatised health or education service; it would be electoral suicide. All politicians know this so instead they are doing it under the radar masked by the promise of choice.

Genuine, useful choice and universal empowerment are great things which should be strived for but do not confuse them with current government policy. Next time you get excited by the prospect of politicians offering you a choice think again as it’s not always a good thing.

To read this year's Darzi summary click the link below

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7480910.stm

For more about the concept of choice read Barry Schwartz's book The Paradox of Choice available by clicking the link below

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

In defence of the BBC: the public will never believe in value for money

2008-08-19T14:21:00.003+01:00

This week’s Media Guardian front-page story analysed ‘the figures that spell worrying news for the corporation.’ The figures came form their exclusive Ipsos Mori poll and the corporation was the BBC. According to the report while 61% of those questioned (2021) named BBC 1 as their favourite channel, only 41% thought that the BBC provided good value for money.

These figures are not, however, surprising and do not signal that the public are losing faith in a public funded broadcaster. Moreover, as the online and onscreen market place becomes evermore crowded it should be welcome news to those at the BBC that the majority of people surveyed stated that BBC 1 is their favourite channel.

As the BBC expands its service to cater for the plethora of requirements made by the public, we will continue to see many who do not think that they are receiving value for money. The sports fans who are loving the 24 hours of Olympic coverage every day provided by BBC 1, BBC2, interactive and online, may not think that the license fee should be spent on commissioning alternative comedy for BBC 3. Likewise those who enjoy wildlife documentaries may feel that too much money is being spent producing Eastenders.

The report concluded that ‘many at the BBC maintain that the huge shifts in technology and consumption over the past decade - laid bare in last week's Ofcom study of the communications market - make the case for a licence fee-funded BBC stronger not weaker. The results of our research appear to suggest that message is not wholeheartedly endorsed by those who pay it.’

As a competitor of the BBC the Guardian may resent the license fee, as it does give the BBC many advantages. The paper has brought to light many valid criticisms of the organisation, such as the huge salaries it pays to select presenters. It is unfair and inaccurate, however, to imply that the BBC is not delivering value for money because the public say so. Ask anyone if they think that they are getting value for money and the majority will say no.

The paper did contain one interesting proposal to cut expenditure, though it was made by David Levy of Oxford University and not one of its journalists. The cost of evasion and collection makes up 8.7% of the licence fee, something that the public probably did not take into account during the survey but a cost which, unlike programming that does not interest the majority, is a waste. Levy suggests adopting a system like the French which ‘assumes that taxpayers have a TV and adds a separate licence fee payment to their local tax bill. Those without a TV, or a licence at another address, tick a box on their tax form and the system then checks up on them. Net collection costs were cut by €100m (65%) to just €55m - and evasion was reduced by more than 75% from 6.36% in 2004 to 1.25% in 2005. Licence fee income increased in spite of a 10% reduction in those required to pay.’

If the BBC is going to compete with the private sector it has to be prepared for more polls of this kind. Instead of worrying about the pleasing everyone all of the time they should be focusing on maintaining and even increasing the number of people who rate their platforms as the best. And when it comes to delivering value for money the savings should be made by cutting costs not content.

Click this link to read the results of the Ipsos Mori poll

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/18/bbc.television

Click this link to read David Levy's proposal in full

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/18/bbc.television1

The state of the newspaper industry - where now?

2008-08-14T12:43:00.004+01:00

The recent news of more than 6,000 journalists loosing their jobs in America, plus falling advertising revenues and stock prices, is a worrying sign for the industry both sides of the Atlantic. There are many differences between the newspaper industries in the USA and the UK but both are in trouble and things are getting worse.

In a roundtable discussion hosted by Democracy Now, Bernard Lunzer, president of the Newspaper Guild, Chris Hedges, senior fellow at the Nation Institute and former New York Times foreign correspondent and Linda Jue, Director of New Voices in Independent Journalism looked at the causes and consequences of the latest job losses and the possible solutions.

While everyone agreed that concentration of ownership was one of the reasons behind job losses and a decrease in the quality of coverage, the internet proved a more contentious issue. Hedges citied it as one of the main problems while Jue predicted it could be the saviour.

Hedges said: “I think the important issue here concerns the internet. There has been an assumption, which I think is false, that newspapers will make the transition to the internet, that the internet is just another delivery system.

“Only ten percent of ad revenue goes to the internet. In terms of national figures, it’s about $21 billion a year, which is a very small percentage of revenues. We’ll still get those sort of free dailies they hand out on the metro, designed to be read in twenty minutes, which are essentially advertising rags with virtually no reporting. But the large newspapers are dying, and the internet is not going to replace them.

“I think if you look at the blogosphere, it’s very clear that there’s a parasitic quality. They feed off of the wire services and the newspapers, which probably account for about 80 percent of all newsgathering. When that’s gone, we are just going to descend into kind of packaging and partisanship and propaganda.”

Some would argue, however, that the current corporate media model is already packaging propaganda, see Naom Chomsky’s propaganda model. And while much of what is found on the web is not first hand reporting, some information is and as new models of ownership emerge this type of coverage is set to increase. Hodges is correct, though, when he says that newsgathering and investigative journalism are suffering. The cause, though, is the pressures of commercialisation and consolidation, and not the internet.

In defence of the internet Jue said: I’m not sure that I agree entirely with what you’re saying, Chris, because I am witnessing, actually, in the Bay Area numerous new enterprises starting to come up, being formed actually by journalists, to find new business models that will sustain very good journalism.

“Foundations are actually beginning to look at that more, and there are new cooperative models that are being proposed right now, business proposals that are being proposed right now that I know of, to deal with the issue of foreign reporting and also to deal with the problems of in-depth investigative reporting.”

Lunzer also agreed, he said: “There are different models. And some of us are starting to believe that we may have to rescue newspapers from the market itself for these things to survive, for any quality journalism to survive.”

While Hedges seemed too quick to write off the internet as the future, some of his criticisms where important and need to be addressed. “The average reader of the paper copy of the New York Times spends forty-five minutes reading the paper,” he said. “The average viewer of the New York Times website spends about seven minutes. The internet is not designed for a literate society. We are moving into a post-literate society, a society where information and of course a very limited quality is portrayed primarily through images. The internet can make that fusion between print and images. But the medium itself will determine the content. And to somehow look at the internet as simply another delivery system is a mistake. So there are many factors that go in here.”

Writing in this week’s Media Guardian, Jim Bilton said that the problem facing the industry was not the number of readers but the frequency of readers. ‘It is not so much that fewer people are reading newspapers, although this is true - the National Readership Survey suggests that the percentage of adults who read a national daily newspaper has fallen by 2% over the last 18 months. What is actually falling faster is the number of times in a week that people read their newspaper - this has slipped by 3.5% over the same 18-month period,’ he wrote.

The newspaper which is keeping its reader frequency high is the Sun. ‘Driven by its selective, regional price cuts, it is the only national newspaper to show year-on-year growth in July (+0.2%), but this has slowed right down from the 2-3% rises seen in earlier months. Currently 31% of its UK sale is below its full cover price of 35p. So, the recent announcement that it is moving to a national price of 30p has sent shudders through the whole industry, fearful that this could be the start of a new price war.’

If newspaper owners and editors decide that the answer to falling readership is to cut prices then things may get worse. The dangers of ownership concentration, outlined in the Democracy Now discussion, will be exacerbated as smaller papers are driven out of the market of taken over.

We are fast approaching a point were either the cooperative models, which Jue puts her faith in, need to take off or further consolidation is inevitable.

To watch the full Democracy Now discussion click the link below

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/29/newspapers_suffer_spate_of_layoffs_decline

To read Jim Bilton’s article click the link below

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/11/abcs

Hypocrisy: Vice or Virtue?

2008-08-12T11:09:00.008+01:00

No one likes a hypocrite but we all tolerate our own hypocrisies and that of our friends and family. However, when those in power are tarnished with the term it’s a different story. Their careers can be ruined if the hypocrisy is significant and proven. That is why so many political campaigns focus on trying to draw attention to opposing candidates’ hypocrisy. David Runciman, lecturer in political theory at the University of Cambridge, argues in his book ‘Political Hypocrisy: The Mask of Power, from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond’, that the clamour for sincerity should not be a straightforward case in which all hypocrisy is defined as unwanted.

Runciman uses the work of various writers such as George Orwell, Bernard Mandeville and Jeremy Bentham to show that various distinctions need to be made in order to separate those hypocrisies which are necessary for our political systems to function from those which are dangerous.

In a chapter looking at the work of Mandeville, Runicman draws attention to a conversation in his book ‘An Enquiry into the Origins of Honour’ (1732). The book is a dialogue between two characters called Horatio and Cleomenes.

‘Cleomenes: There are tow sorts of Hypocrites, that differ very much from one another. To distinguish them by names, the one I would call the malicious, and the other the fashionable. By malicious hypocrites, I mean such as pretend to a great deal of religion, when they know their pretensions to be false; who take pains to appear pious and devout, in order to be villains, and in hopes that they will be trusted to get an opportunity of deceiving those, who believe them to be sincere. Fashionable hypocrites I call those who, without any motive of religion or sense of duty, go to church, in imitation of their neighbours; counterfeit devotion, and without any design upon others, comply occasionally with all the rites and ceremonies of public workship, from no other principle than aversion to singularity, and a desire of being in the fashion. The first are, as you say, the worst of them; but the other are more beneficial to society, and can only be injurious to themselves.’

This is my favourite of the simpler definitions of what is the worst and best kind of hypocrisy. And it is one which we can apply today to the ever-increasing need for politicians to be fashionable to be electable. It is, therefore, acceptable for a politician to claim to be ‘one of us’ when the truth is that they are far removed from the lives’ of normal people; it could be no other way.

In a chapter looking at the Founding Fathers and their attempts to define and deal with hypocrisy, Runciman stumbles on the dangers of using hypocrisy to mask and blur the differences between political ideologies. ‘When the Federalists abandoned their original name and started to pass themselves off as Republicans, [Thomas] Jefferson warned that “the amalgamation is of name only … Hence new Republicans in Congress preaching the doctrines of the old Federalists.” In 1823, he wrote that the Federalists “have shrunk from the odium of their old appellation, taken to themselves a participation of ours … under the pseudo-republican mask.” And in one of his last letters from 1825, he declared: “The common division of whig and tory, or according to our denominations of republican and federal … is the most salutary of all divisions, and right, therefore, to be fostered instead of being amalgamated. For take away this and some more dangerous principle of division will take its place.’

As David Cameron puts on the mask of the ‘caring conservative’ it would be wise for all of us to heed Jefferson’s warning.

One of the things that this book makes clear is that hypocrisy becomes dangerous when it transforms into self-deceit. As Simon Jenkins writes in the Times: ‘The difficulty, and it is immense, is that of which Hobbes warned. When a proclaimed pragmatism strays into self-deception and we lose sight of what is truly at stake, hypocrisy loses its virtue and becomes toxic.’

It is rather worrying then, that having read this book, John Redwood MP sees fit to write that: ‘I do not agree with David Runciman that lying is a necessary or essential part of politics, and we merely have to decide which kind of hypocrite we wish to elect.’ Redwood then goes on to illustrate many of the occasions when members of the Labour party have practised hypocrisy. He is presenting us with a choice between this and the sincere Conservatives. Of course it is always possible to turn the pages without reading the words.

In the introduction to the book Runciman quotes from Judith Shklar’s Ordinary Vices: ‘Shklar makes the case for ranking the vices according to the nature of the threat that they pose to liberal societies. The vice that emerges as the worst of all, and by far, is cruelty…. she wants us to stop spending so much time worrying about hypocrisy, and to stop minding about it so much.’ It is difficult not to worry about something which everyone detests at face value. Having read this book, however, it is clear that hypocrisy is a necessary vice or as Rochefoucauld said: “Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.” Deciding what is necessary and what is not is the difficult part but there is no better book to help you make up your mind.

'Political Hypocrisy: The Mask of Power, from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond' is published by Princeton University Press and is available at the following link:

Political Hypocrisy The Mask of Power from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond

Labour Must Endorse Living Wage Campaign to Win Back Popular Support

2008-08-08T10:40:00.000+01:00

Cast your mind back nine years to a time when the Labour party had recently stormed to power and a wave of public optimism still swept the nation. We may have been duped but back then Labour did implement some radical reforms. Now, as the poorest members of society are struggling to cope with rising food and utility bills, it is time for the government to revisit one of its most successful policies, the minimum wage.

It is clear that the introduction of the minimum wage improved the circumstances of many workers, and even Conservative critics now back the policy, with the predicted negative impact on businesses never materialising. £5.52 per hour, however, is no longer enough and as the minimum wage has failed to increase in line with inflation its impact has diminished.

Labour should now go further. Introducing a national living wage - which allows anyone in full-time employment to enjoy an acceptable standard of living - would do more than any of the policies being mooted at present to tackle the impact of the ‘credit crunch’ on the poorest workers.

London is already leading the way with its own living wage. Without enforcement, however, the majority of employers have understandably chosen to stick with the national minimum wage. The Living Wage Employer Award hopes to change this. Stephen O’Brien, joint president of London First, described the award as “a new and much anticipated mark of socially responsible business practice". “A growing number of high profile organisations are now part of the Living Wage Employer Group and London 2012 is set to be the first ever living wage Olympics.”

While the benefits of a living wage for workers and society are obvious – social cohesion, higher living standards, lower crime levels, improvements in health, greater incentive to work - there are also many benefits for employers. A KPMG report stated that since becoming a living wage employer the Royal London Hospital reduced its cleaning staff turnover by 50%. Furthermore, better pay means higher productivity and a happier and more motivated workforce.

Even Mayor of London Boris Johnson, who opposed the national minimum wage, is an advocate of the London living wage and earlier this year increased it to £7.45 per hour. “This is not only morally right but makes good business sense contributing to better recruitment and retention of staff, higher productivity, and a more loyal workforce with high morale,” he said. It is a sad state of affairs when a Tory such as Johnson is the one defending workers’ rights and the Conservatives are claiming to be the party of the poor. They will not fool many but there is, at the moment, no alternative.

London may have been an exceptional case in the past but nationally wages of average earners have remained almost static in recent years and those of the bottom third fell between 2004 and 2007. A national living wage would help to change these damning statistics. If Labour want to tackle poverty they should export the living wage to the rest of the UK. By implementing a national living wage, perhaps with regional variances, they would be able to help those most at need.

Business leaders would plead poverty themselves, as many did prior to the introduction of the minimum wage, but the cost would not have to sit solely with them. By increasing the tax free allowance the government could, in effect, pay much of the cost itself. Public opinion, for a change, would be behind them with a recent Harris poll showing that the majority of people favoured lowering taxes for the poor. The same poll also showed the majority in favour of higher taxes for the richest, but that would surely be asking too much from a government in thrall to the super-rich.

How to decide the level of the living wage would be a contentious issue. However, the results of a recent research project carried out by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation calculated the amount of money required for a ‘socially acceptable standard of living.’ The report concluded that ‘a single adult, working full time, needs to earn £6.88 per hour to reach this weekly standard.’ The study also found that the minimum income standard calculated was higher than the current threshold for relative poverty. The government’s already poor record on tackling poverty, therefore, is even worse than current measures indicate.

Julie Unwin, director of the foundation, said: “This research is designed to encourage debate and to start building a public consensus about what level of income no one should have to live below.” If Labour, whoever their leader is, want to regain the trust of core supporters and improve their chances before the next election they need to be the party leading this debate. Back in their heyday they fought hard to introduce a national minimum wage; they should now do the same for a national living wage.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation report can be found at the following address:

www.jrf.org.uk/kowledge/findings/socialpolicy/2244.asp

Call for energy windfall tax to tackle fuel poverty

2008-08-06T15:27:00.004+01:00

Energy companies in the UK are pleading poverty. Their profits are being slashed, they tell us, as wholesale prices of gas and oil increase. They must, therefore, increase the price at which they are selling fuel to us. But when these corporations are still making billions it’s difficult to feel sorry for them. That is why leading figures from the fields of politics, journalism and academia are joining forces to urge the government to act now and implement a windfall tax.

“After the Glasgow East byelection defeat the government said they were listening. We need to send a loud and clear message that action can be taken now to reduce fuel poverty and help save the environment,” said Gavin Hayes, in an email to Compass members.

The campaign, organised by Compass and backed by host of prominent figures states that: ‘Rising energy and fuel prices are affecting everyone but it's the poorest and those on fixed incomes who are paying the heaviest price.

‘We believe that the moment is right for the government to levy a sensible one off windfall tax to guarantee social and environmental justice both now and in the future.

‘The average annual spend on domestic energy per household has now breached £1200. Since 2000 we have faced gas price rises of 100% and electricity price rises of 61% - with further increases including British Gas raising its gas bills by a record 35%. Simultaneously the main energy providers have seen their profits rise from £557 million in 2003 to now over £3 billion. This alongside the recent news of profits made by oil companies - BP is now making £37 million a day with a 23% increase in profits to £6.7 billion for the first 6 months of 2008.

‘The government estimates that 2.5 million families are living in fuel poverty, whilst Energywatch puts the figure at over 4 million. Yet despite the billions made in profits, the energy industry spends just £50 million a year combating fuel poverty and has only agreed to raise this to £150 million a year by 2010.

‘At the same time there is a lack of investment in securing renewable energy to help Britain become energy independent and more carbon neutral. By 2020 the UK wants 15% of all energy to be from renewable sources, this is currently only 2%. Increased investment is urgently needed if the government is to meet its target.

‘In 2008 the spike in the price of oil has today lead to substantial unearned profits for the main oil and energy companies - we therefore call on the government to levy a windfall tax.

‘Revenues from the tax should be ring-fenced to deliver social and environmental justice for all. Part of the money raised should be used to immediately help those struggling with rising fuel bills and should be particularly targeted at families in or facing fuel poverty. However the best strategy to eliminate fuel poverty forever is to ensure every home is insulated and energy efficient to the highest standards. Therefore much of the money raised should be used to kick-start a national programme of home energy efficiency and installing renewable energy, starting with the homes of the fuel poor.

‘Used in the right way this could benefit the UK economy as a whole - just as the New Deal in 1997 created new jobs for the long term unemployed, such an investment could see the creation of hundreds of thousands of new jobs in renewable energy production, insulation, building renovation and other sectors.’

Sign up to the campaign to add your voice by clicking here

Unjust Rewards? New book exposes the reality of the rich

2008-08-05T15:19:00.007+01:00

With the gap between the richest and the poorest people in the UK increasing a new book reveals the extent to which the new super rich are loosing touch with the reality faced by the majority of citizens.

Unjust Rewards, which is being serialised in the Guardian this week, is written by journalists Polly Toynbee and David Walker. The book contains interviews with many highly paid city workers looking at their attitudes about earnings and growing inequality.

In one display of arrogance and ignorance one of the bankers interviewed for the book said: “Many people, like teachers, don’t do things for pay. But you won’t find a teacher that works as hard as we do.”

‘But,’ ask the authors, ‘did they work 10 times as hard as a teacher on 30,000 a year or, in the case of some lawyers and bankers, 100 times as hard?’ No is the answer but this had no barring on the views of the majority of top earners.

Toynbee and Walker are not trying to say that these people should feel guilty and give up most of what they earn. Instead they are exposing the lack of awareness inside the City bubble.

When the conversation turned to taxation there were several responses but none where in favour of a fair tax system. ‘Response one: we will leave, and you will be poorer. Or: we don't deserve to be forced to pay more. Or: even if we were taxed more, the money would all be wasted.

‘John Hills's charts showed how the modern UK tax system can barely be called progressive, with the top 10th of income earners paying a smaller proportion of their total income in tax than the bottom 10th. The poor are hit hard by VAT and other indirect taxes: they spend relatively more on taxable goods and services. Even when confronted with that evidence, the bankers especially gave the crudest response, saying flatly that they contributed more in cash - denying the point of a progressive tax system, which is that higher earners pay a larger proportionate share.’

The most disturbing thing about the findings in this section of the book is the obvious lack of compassion expressed by those questioned. Furthermore, there is no sense that they feel privileged and that by giving something back they could improve society and consequently there own lives.

To read more extracts from the book click the link below.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/aug/04/workandcareers.executivesalaries

Unjust Rewards: Exposing Greed and Inequality in Britain Today

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth

2008-07-28T15:33:00.007+01:00

Political discourse is littered with claims, counter-claims, deliberate deceptions and honest mistakes. It is hard to know what to believe as the line between fact and fiction is constantly blurred. Some relief is at hand, however, thanks to the work of a non-profit and non-partisan website: www.factcheck.org

Their regular email updates analyse claims made in political speeches, television programmes and radio broadcasts, revealing the truth behind the rhetoric. In the last few days the site has revealed false allegations made by and against both presidential candidates.

Here are some examples of the recent inaccuracies exposed on the site:

McCain’s Viagra moment

‘Planned Parenthood is running a TV ad showing John McCain painfully groping for an answer to a reporter's question: ‘It's unfair that health insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control. Do you have an opinion on that?’

‘McCain had good reason to be flustered. The premise of the reporter's question is a myth. We couldn't find any data that show a disparity between health insurance companies that cover Viagra and those that cover birth control. The full range of contraceptives, in fact, are covered by more than 86 percent of private insurance plans written for employers.’

The truth of troop support

‘The McCain campaign is running a TV ad attacking Obama with statements that are literally true but paint an incomplete picture.

‘It says he "voted against funding our troops." He did – exactly once. Obama cast at least 10 votes for war-funding bills before voting against one last year, after Bush vetoed a version that contained a date for withdrawal from Iraq.

‘It says he "hasn't been to Iraq for years." He was headed there at the time the ad was released, however, and had been there in 2006.

‘It says he "never held a single hearing on Afghanistan." It was the full Senate Foreign Relations Committee, not Obama's subcommittee, that had the hearings on this global hot spot, and Obama attended one of those. Over the same time period, McCain himself attended none of the Afghanistan hearings held by the Armed Services Committee on which he serves.’

Vets for Freedom ad attributes CIA chief's viewpoint to a critical newspaper

'Vets for Freedom, a group made up of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, launched a new ad this week that falsely attributes a quote to the Washington Post. The ad gives the impression that the Post was a critic of the surge in Iraq and is now admitting it was wrong. But the words the group uses are the views of the head of the CIA, not the newspaper.'

So whatever your political leaning, if you’re interested in finding out the facts register with Fact Check by clicking the link below.

Fact Check website

Max Mosley: not inhibiting investigative journalism

2008-07-25T11:37:00.004+01:00

The press reaction to the judgement in the Max Mosley case has exaggerated the judge’s sentiments, making claims that he has in effect gagged them. To many people Mosley’s actions were morally repugnant but this ruling has been about what is in the public interest not about the purity of his actions.

The Times editorial falsely claimed that ‘there is a contest between two essential points of principle: an individual’s expectation to privacy in the modern world and the importance of a free press in a civilised society. Mr Justice Eady has tipped the scales in favour of privacy over press freedom.’ The judgement, however, did not say that privacy was more important than press freedom. Instead Mr Justice Eady was drawing a view as to what is genuinely in the public interest and also making clear that when intruding into someone’s private life the press must make sure that any allegations they make are factually accurate; lets remember that there was no proof of Nazism.

The Times, whose parent company, Rupert Murdock’s News Corporation, also own the News of the World, added wait to their disapproval of the ruling by saying that it would only allow the rich and famous to the right of privacy. This may be the case but it is only the rich and the famous that face intrusions into their private lives on this scale.

At a time when newspaper sales are falling and public trust of journalists is at an all-time low, editors should be doing everything they can to show that they are acting in the public interest, that their reporting is honest and that they are carrying out serious investigative journalism. While the Mosley story generated huge sales in the short-term, the long-term damage that printing lies and trivialities is doing to these brands is partly responsible for many of them making a loss.

Recent years have seen a decline in the amount of investigative journalism that newspapers carryout. The reason for this is not, however, because journalists have to respect the privacy of public figures. As Nick Davis illustrated in his book Flat Earth News, the reason that we are seeing less investigative journalism is due to the pressures of commercialisation in the media. As the sales of newspapers continue to fall they are being forced to operate with smaller budgets. Editors respond by streamlining their staff, meaning fewer people have to write more. The result is a less credible product which the public don’t trust and don’t buy and it’s a cycle that must be broken. More stories reporting the sex lives of public figures won’t break the cycle and the courts ruling doesn’t apply to any investigation which is in the public interest.

The key part of Justice Eady’s statement was that: “There is nothing landmark about this decision. Nor can it be suggested that the case is likely to inhibit serious investigative journalism into crime or wrongdoing, where the public interest is more genuinely engaged.”

The News of the World’s editor, Colin Myler, tried to justify the paper’s story by saying that: “Taking part in depraved and brutal S&M orgies on a regular basis does not in our opinion constitute the fit and proper behaviour to be expected of someone in his hugely influential position.” As long as Mosley’s actions were not interfering with his duties and they were not in contradiction to promises he has made then it does not matter if the News of the World believes them to ‘proper’.

Media consolidation is also having a damaging impact on the standards of investigative journalism. The Sun, also owned by News Corporation, proclaimed that ‘the result will be a less honest society in which famous people use the law to hide their misdeeds while papers are put in the dock for exposing wrongdoing.’

A more accurate leader would of read: ‘the result will be more honest, considered and vigorously researched reporting where papers will be put in the dock for lying and acting without the public interest in mind.

For too long newspapers, the tabloids especially, have been reporting what is interesting to the public and masking their motives with the principle of public interest. They must stop this of they are to regain trust and survive financially. This judgement will only help them in achieving this, although it may have no impact whatsoever.

Sources:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article4393319.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/william_rees_mogg/article4392916.ece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/24/mosley.privacy1/print
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1469129.ece
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/sun_says/article244723.ece
Davies, N., 2007. Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media. London: Chatto and Windus.

Politics and Emotions

2008-07-24T15:09:00.005+01:00

Demos, a new think tank whose mission is 'building everyday democracy', is carrying out a consultation to find out people's views about the role of emotion in political decision making.

'British political life is in the throes of a paradox. The public seem to be both anxious and bored: fearful about life as the ‘nice decade’ draws to an end, but bored with a government seemingly unable to address their fears. These are emotional times.

But are we at ease talking about emotions? They are seen as manipulative, worse, selfish and certainly not to be trusted as a guide to decision-making.

We need to reappraise emotion and its role in politics. In an increasingly complex and interdependent world we need the development of a genuine emotional resilience.

In September, Demos will be publishing a call to arms for just such a resilience. At this years' Hay-on-Wye literary festival we sparked a debate, one that goes far beyond the Westminster bubble, one that we hope you will contribute to...'

How do you feel about politics in this country?

Politics has become about small differences between parties and a convergence of ideas. Policies are too often about short-term gains rather than sustainable solutions. Politicians seem to be scared of the influence that they perceive the mainstream media and business to have over the general public, to an extent whereby they will not cross them. This leads them to ignore their emotional conscience and instead of doing what they believe to be correct, they do what they think will keep the media and corporations onside, hopefully leading to election success. The principled stand of David Davis was noteworthy due to the coverage it generated, when all he did was do what he felt was right. In no other field would someone standing up for what they believe in make the front page of the papers.

As Drew Western has shown in his book ‘The Political Brain’ people vote with their emotions, so why should we expect politicians to make policy decisions without them. In reality rational thought and emotions are intertwined and equally valid when making decisions. I think people are fearful of politicians who are too emotional when making decisions, as they are constantly bombarded with negative emotions such as fear, cruelty, selfishness and anger, failing to realise that for many people involved in politics feelings such as compassion are equally prevalent.

Do you sometimes hold contradictory political views?

Yes, in the sense that overall I can support a specific party but on many occasions not agree with them. In terms of my own beliefs, given time I generally rationalise them in my own mind and convince myself that they are not contradictory but sometimes I’m fooling myself. For example, despite good intentions on issues such as the environment, at times I’m hypocritical. There is, therefore, a contradiction between my political beliefs and my own actions. I then rationalise this by thinking that I’m only one person so I can’t make the required difference. Or being a student that I can’t afford to always make the most environmentally beneficial choices.

What was the last emotion a politician triggered in you?

Frustration – generally from avoiding answering questions directly and failing act with any independence from their party.

When did you last feel passionate about an issue?

I have recently started writing for a website called the London Progressive Journal about issues which I feel strongly about. My last article was about the child curfew scheme which is being implemented in Redruth.

What is your first political memory?

The whole rise of Tony Blair and New Labour which happened when I was about 13. Although I can’t pin it down to one exact moment.

These where my answers. You can have your say on the Demos website by clicking the link below.

http://www.demos.co.uk/projects/politicsandemotions/overview

Naomi Klein says oil shock is the latest form of 'disaster capitalsim'

2008-07-24T11:07:00.010+01:00

In her latest column in the Nation, Naomi Klein, author of the Shock Doctrine, shows how the current oil crisis is being exploited by large multinationals. Klein writes: "After years of back-room arm-twisting, Iraq is officially flinging open six of its major oil fields, accounting for around half of its known reserves, to foreign investors. According to Iraq's oil minister, the long-term contracts will be signed within a year. While ostensibly under control of the Iraq National Oil Company, foreign firms will keep 75 percent of the value of the contracts, leaving just 25 percent for their Iraqi partners."

'Invading countries to seize their natural resources is illegal under the Geneva Conventions. That means that the huge task of rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure--including its oil infrastructure--is the financial responsibility of Iraq's invaders. They should be forced to pay reparations. (Recall that Saddam Hussein's regime paid $9 billion to Kuwait in reparations for its 1990 invasion.) Instead, Iraq is being forced to sell 75 percent of its national patrimony to pay the bills for its own illegal invasion and occupation.'

According to Klein It's not just in Iraq where the rise in the price of oil is being exploited. 'Despite the Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less bumper stickers, drilling in ANWR [Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] would have little discernible impact on actual global oil supplies, as its advocates well know. The argument that it could nonetheless bring down oil prices is based not on hard economics but on market psychoanalysis: drilling would "send a message" to the oil traders that more oil is on the way, which would cause them to start betting down the price.

'Two points follow from this approach. First, trying to psych out hyperactive commodity traders is what passes for governing in the Bush era, even in the midst of a national emergency. Second, it will never work. If there is one thing we can predict from the oil market's recent behavior, it is that the price is going to keep going up regardless of what new supplies are announced.'

To read the article in full click the link below.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080721/lookout

Klein also invites people to support the campaign to allow the oil in Iraq to stay in the ownership of Iraqis. The website states that: 'Hands Off Iraqi Oil is a UK coalition opposing any foreign exploitation of Iraq's oil reserves that rips off the Iraqi people. Members include Corporate Watch, Iraq Occupation Focus, Jubilee Iraq, PLATFORM, Voices UK, and War on Want. Supporters include the Stop the War Coalition.'

The campaigns website is: http://www.handsoffiraqioil.org/

Bill Moyers on Media Reform: “Democracy Only Works When Ordinary People Claim It as Their Own”

2008-07-23T16:33:00.004+01:00

American broadcaster Bill Moyers speech at the fourth annual National Conference for Media Reform, organized by the group Free Press was a rallying call to fight against media consolidation.

"As conglomerates swallow up newspapers, magazines, publishing houses and broadcast outlets, news organizations are folded into entertainment divisions. The “news hole” in the print media shrinks to make room for ads, celebrities, nonsense and propaganda, and the news we need to know slips from sight," he said.

Mr Moyers concluded by saying: "So it’s up to you to tell the truth about this country we love. It’s up to you to tell the truth about what’s happening to ordinary people. It’s up to you to remind us that democracy only works when ordinary people claim it as their own. It’s up to you to write the story of America that leaves no one out. And it’s up to you to rekindle the patriot’s dream.

"Perhaps too much is being asked of too few, but you’re not alone, remember? Look around. You’re not alone, and you know what we need to know. So go tell it on the mountains and in the cities. From your websites and laptops, tell it. From the street corners and coffeehouse, tell it. From delis and diners, tell it. From the workshop and the bookstore, tell it. On campus, at the mall, the synagogue, sanctuary and mosque, tell it. Tell it where you can, when you can and while you can. Tell America what we need to know, and we may just rekindle the patriot dream. Good luck to one and all."

To listen to the full speech click on the link below.

www.democracynow.org/2008/6/9/moyers

The US Election and the Changing Face of Electoral Politics

2008-07-22T11:15:00.006+01:00

As the second term of President George W. Bush comes to an end, the majority of Americans are unhappy with the job he has done and that of Congress and the Supreme Court (Jones, 2008). Fuelled by this desire for change, the 2008 presidential race has shown that candidates who most symbolise a new approach to politics are the ones who are going to be most successful in the early twenty-first century. Beyond the obvious and important manifestations of this need for change, the first black or female president, three key trends have also emerged. Firstly, it has become evident that the Democratic Party is moving away from policy driven campaigns in favour of those focusing on emotional appeals. Secondly, this campaign has signified a trend for more centrist politics, a factor which has also led to the nomination of John McCain as the Republican candidate. Lastly, the internet has played a noteworthy part in each campaign, both in terms of raising money and through the influence of the commentary written on the web.

By examining the differences between the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama it is possible to ascertain that the candidate who became less involved in detailed policy explanations and focused instead on constructing a clear and emotional message of change was more successful. This led to what many thought would be a strength for Clinton – being the wife of one of the most popular presidents in recent times – turning out to be a weakness by associating her with the past. It was also clear that the more she talked emotionally, such as in the New Hampshire primary, the more votes she polled.

While Obama mastered the personal narrative and emotional style required to attract voters, there was also a trend amongst all the Democrat candidates to adopt this style. His campaign, though, was based, more than any previous Democrat, around who he was and where he had come from, leading him to talk about his life rather than his ideas; something which Republican candidates have been doing successfully for decades.

This has not been the case in the past for Democratic candidates, who have held the mistaken belief that emotional campaigns are inherently manipulative. Rejecting this notion signifies an end to the politics of the previous century, when the Republicans concentrated their campaigns on appealing to the emotions of the American people whereas the Democrats relied on rational argument and detailed policies. Westen (2007) explains how the emotional parts of the brain override the rational and how this has led to the failure of the majority of Democrat presidential candidates. ‘You can slog it out for those few millimetres of cerebral turf that process facts, figures and policy statements’ in the way Al Gore and John Kerry did or ‘ you can take your campaign to the broader neural electorate,’ (Westen, 2007. p.88) in the way Obama and to a lesser extent Clinton have done.

Whilst the candidates have tried to avoid drawn out policy debates, when they have revealed their specific ideas these have been designed to appeal to the centre ground. For Obama this began in 2004 when, in a speech to the Democratic convention, he called for an end to the bickering of partisan politics. ‘He moved from his leftist Hyde Park base to more centrist circles; he forged early alliances with the good-government reform crowd only to be embraced later by the city’s all-powerful Democratic bosses; he railed against pork-barrel politics but engaged in it when needed; and he empathized with the views of his Palestinian friends before adroitly courting the city’s politically potent Jewish community’ (Becker & Drew 2008).

The 2008 primaries have also signified that the traditional sources of political news, while still the most important, are now being rivalled by those online, with 24% of Americans regularly learning something about this campaign from the internet (Pew, 2008). Moreover, the figure is 42% for voters aged 18-29 (ibid) a sign that in the future the internet will be as significant as broadcast and print media to the success of political campaigns.

Not only is the internet providing people with a new medium from which to receive news, it is also breaking exclusive stories, utilising information from citizen journalists close to the campaign trail. Exemplifying this, the Huffington Post exclusively reported Obama’s comments that ‘it's not surprising then they [citizens in small-town Pennsylvania] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion … as a way to explain their frustrations’ (Fowler, 2008). The resultant controversy threatened to damage Obama’s campaign and candidates must realise that as more people start blogging and setting up political websites their comments are going to come under greater scrutiny.

Whether the contest for the Democratic nomination heralds a new era, where people can rise to the top in politics or business without their race or sex being an issue, is impossible to deduce. Over thirty years ago Margaret Thatcher’s victory in the British Parliamentary Election was seen as symbol of the end of sexism in Britain. Yet, since then, none of the main parties have had a female leader and there remains pay inequality between men and women. In the past, however, the election of a non-white or female president was never a serious possibility, so while the extent of this campaign’s impact on society remains to be seen, it is already a significant step towards equality.

What this contest has signified is a change in the way elections in America will be fought in the early twenty-first century. American politics will be about the battle for the centre ground, where key swing voters decide election results. Both parties will be appealing to the emotions of these voters, as Democratic politics becomes less about detailed policies and more about personality. What has also been evident is the role that the internet has played in the campaign strategies and success and failure of Obama and Clinton. As this century progresses it seems certain that these three changes will grow in significance, shaping American politics in the future.

References

Becker, J. & Drew C., 2008. Pragmatic Politics, Forged on the South Side. New York: New York Times. Available from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/ 11/us/ politics/11chicago.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=pragmatic+politics&st=nyt&oref=slogin [Accessed 15 June 2008].

Fowler, M., 2008. Obama Exclusive (Audio): On V.P And Foreign Policy, Courting the Working Class, and Hard-Pressed Pennsylvanians. San Francisco: Huffington Post. Available from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/obama-exclusive-audio-on_b_96333.html [Accessed 10 June 2008].

Jones, J., 2008. Bush, Congress, Supreme Court Near Historical Low. Washington: Gallup. Available from http://www.gallup.com/poll/108010/Bush-Congress-Supreme-Court-Near-Historical-Low-Approval.aspx [Accessed 17 June 2008].

Pew, 2008. Internet’s Broader Role in Campaign 2008. Washington: Pew.
Available from http://people-press.org/report/384/internets-broader-role-in-campaign-2008 [Accessed 14 June 2008]

Westen, D., 2007. The Political Brain. New York: Public Affairs.

Careers advice you don't receive at college

2008-07-22T10:14:00.005+01:00

Guardian columnist George Monbiot has some refreshing career advice for an alternative path to your job of choice:

'The first advice I would offer is this: be wary of following the careers advice your college gives you. In journalism school, for example, students are routinely instructed that, though they may wish to write about development issues in Latin America, in order to achieve the necessary qualifications and experience they must first spend at least three years working for a local newspaper, before seeking work for a national newspaper, before attempting to find a niche which brings them somewhere near the field they want to enter. You are told to travel, in other words, in precisely the opposite direction to the one you want to take. You want to go to Latin America? Then first you must go to Nuneaton. You want to write about the Zapatistas? Then first you must learn how to turn corporate press releases into “news”. You want to be free? Then first you must learn to be captive.

'The advisers say that a career path like this is essential if you don’t want to fall into the “trap” of specialisation: that is to say, if you want to be flexible enough to respond to the changing demands of the employment market. But the truth is that by following the path they suggest, you are becoming a specialist: a specialist in the moronic recycling of what the rich and powerful deem to be news. And after a few years of that, you are good for very little else.'

Click the link below to read more thoughts on the world of work.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2000/06/09/choose-life/

A guide for the freedom seeker

2008-07-21T13:45:00.015+01:00

Frowned upon by society, idleness is seen as wasting time, wasting potential and is generally regarded as a synonym of laziness. Reading ‘How to be Free’ by Tom Hodgkinson, however, has fleshed out my tendency to believe that idleness is actually an essential part of humanity, a time where people can make large strides and experience great joy. Hodgkinson’s work is full of illustrations from a bygone medieval age where life was a lot slower, a lot simpler and, in his opinion, people a lot happier. By applying many of these ideas to his life, Hodgkinson has been able to rely on himself to produce what he needs, therefore creating more time to ‘play’ and rejecting the standard pattern of work life balance.

While some of the changes he has made may not be practical or desired by everyone – his total abstinence from television and newspapers for example - the best parts of his lifestyle manifesto are the mental changes he prescribes.

Whether you want to make massive changes to your life or just a few, this book is wittily written, drawing on philosophy from ancient Greece to the present day and having finished the book you’ll fell reinvigorated and inspired to put into action some of what he preaches.

Whilst reading the book I was interested to read a Sunday Times article highlighting how the internet and email are destroying people’s ability to concentrate for long periods of time.

‘Mark Bauerlein, professor of English at Emory University in Atlanta, has just written The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardises Our Future. He portrays a bibliophobic generation of teens, incapable of sustaining concentration long enough to read a book. And learning a poem by heart just strikes them as dumb.

‘These things do make our lives easier, but only by destroying the very selves that should be protesting at every distraction, demanding peace, quiet and contemplation.’

Hodgkinson would disagree. Much of ‘these things’, he writes, actually make our lives a lot harder. An amusing example being that of Ivan Illich who ‘once calculated that if you add up all the time you spend on a car, including the trips to the garage and the time spent earning the money to buy the fuel and maintain the vehicle, and divide by the number of miles you travel, then your average speed in 5mph.’

Perhaps by implementing some of Hodgkinson’s ideas the internet generation can avoid the degradation of concentration.

Some websites recommended in the book to help with living free:

http://www.freedompress.org.uk
http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/
http://www.permaculture-magazine.co.uk
http://www.idler.co.uk/

Click below to read the times article in full

http://www.technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article4362950.ece

Click below to buy 'How to be Free' by Tom Hodgkinson

How to Be Free

Safety Initiatives are Criminalising Young People

2008-07-18T10:34:00.001+01:00

The message is clear: if you’re under 16 years-old and outside after 9pm you’re a menace to society. No longer will adults’ summer evenings be disturbed by the yobs of Redruth, Cornwall, who have little better to do than hang around with their friends, lurking on street corners ready to ruin respectable citizens’ nightly strolls.

Whether the police market this as a ‘child safety initiative’ or a simple curfew, this latest measure continues an unhappy trend to criminalise young people. Rather than tackling the problems which have resulted in Britain’s children being some of the unhappiest in Europe, it simply exacerbates them.

The message from Westminster is also clear: this scheme will be coming to a town near you. Even those who should be defending our liberty such as Julia Goldsworthy, Liberal Democrat MP for Falmouth and Camborne, have seemingly called for the scheme to be extended. “This is a very interesting experiment and I will be keeping a close eye on it. It should be trialled properly with a view to rolling it out to other trouble spots in the country if it gets results,” she said.

It’s not just those who have committed a criminal offence she wants removed, as “simply hanging around on street corners can be enough of a threat.”

Police may claim that the summer curfew is voluntary but any parent who refuses to cooperate will be visited by someone from Social Services or receive a parenting order. Something is not voluntary if you face punishment for non-compliance.

The BBC news managed to find a 'stereotypical' gang of youths to interview for their coverage. All wore hoodies, all smoked and all claimed they would defy the curfew. They failed, however, to locate the children “returning from band practice” whom PC Marc Griffen said would also be stopped and searched.

“We want to put the responsibility for children back into the family home,” added Griffen. In reality the scheme removes all responsibility from parents as it tells them exactly how they have to look after their children. Stuart Waiton, the director of the campaign group Youth Generation Issues, studied a similar curfew implemented in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, in the late 1990’s. Waiton concluded that such schemes were billed as aimed at helping parents but actually helped undermine to their authority. “Parents, not the state, should decide at what time children come in,” he said. Worryingly, a Sunday Times poll claimed that most parents want to see a curfew, but instead of having the state impose one they should take responsibility themselves, allowing flexibility and removing criminalisation.

Not supporting this curfew is not the same as siding with criminals. If people are breaking any laws they should be punished. The majority of young people, however, are not criminals and should not be treated as such. The danger of this scheme is that only those children who don’t respect the police and whose parents don’t force them to comply are left outside. Relinquishing our public spaces to the anti-social is not the solution. Fear-mongering by the media has already started this. Instead we need to be encouraging people of all ages to go outside and reclaim public areas.

In last week’s New Statesman, Suzanne Moore claimed that children need a ‘New Deal’. ‘They need to be given much more space, both physically and mentally. They need to be seen as full of potential, not evil. Demonising them has proved a self-fulfilling prophecy.’ The article brings to attention many worrying facts, ones that should be the focus of local and national policy, instead of simplistic blanket curfews. In the UK only one in five children play outside each day, 3.9m live in poverty and they watch television or use a computer for an average of five hours 20 minutes everyday. According to the Children’s Society in 2006 a fifth of children had mental health problems and one in 12 was self-harming. The solution is not curfews or prison – the UK already locks up more children than any other country in western Europe.

In a report published by the Institute for Public Policy Research about youth crime, Carey Oppenheim said: “The problem with kids these days is the way adults are treating them. Britain is in danger of becoming a nation fearful of its young people: a nation of paedophobics. We need policy which reminds adults – parents and non-parents alike – that it is their responsibility to set norms of behaviour and to maintain them through positive and authoritative interaction with young people.”

The report went on to say that youth crime should be tackled through the use of sport, drama or arts based activities at which attendance is regular and consistent and a final goal is worked towards. Uniformed activities such as Scouts, Guides, Martial Arts and Cadets where skills are acquired and rewarded through badges, belts and ranks. It concluded that early or isolated use of anti-social behaviour orders, juvenile curfews and boot camps often encouraged criminal behaviour.

Not only does Britain have unhappy children, it also has children who are too fat, too lazy and many who lack basic social skills. Don’t go outside, they are being told, because you will be stabbed or attacked by a paedophile, which is only making things worse. Those who dare to risk the dangers of fresh air are now being told that society fears them, so stay inside and play on your Playstation.

Conservative MP David Davis’s recent by-election campaign Haltemprice and Howden may have been a political stunt - he resigned over the government's plans to detain terror suspects for up to 42 days - but he was right about one thing: eroding the liberty of the many is not the best way to tackle the crimes of the few. The removal from view of children will not help to solve the problems they face. While the curfew in Redruth is a trial, it is important that society develops a holistic approach to improve the lives of young people and does not think that demonising all children is the way forward. Children should be made part of the community not ostracised from it.

Brown's Failure to Pursue a Progressive Policy on Taxation is Alienating Labour's Core Support

2008-07-16T12:32:00.000+01:00

Having been marginalised by Iraq, immigration and cash for honours, taxation is once again at the centre of the political debate. As Labour lick their wounds following the 10 pence fiasco and local election defeat, the case is being made for lower taxation to help people in times of economic downturn. An overall lessening of the tax burden may seem like a good thing for those on lower incomes, freeing up money to help pay the bills. The problem, however, is that if taxation is reduced, the services which lower income families rely on will be the first to suffer. Furthermore, lowering the basic rate of income tax helps the poorest least. The answer, therefore, is not to decrease tax but to make it fairer and more progressive.

The Mirrlees Review of the British tax system, published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, shows how the tax credit and benefit system could be altered ‘to strengthen work incentives for people on low incomes, to increase simplicity and certainty for families, and to reduce fraud and administration costs to the taxpayer.’

Currently, by stopping some benefit payments completely, people moving from unemployment into low paid jobs are no better off. The new system proposed would combine all existing benefits for low-income families into a single programme. As a person’s income increases, their benefit payment would gradually decline. Thirty percent of the poorest workers would see their incomes increase by 4-5 percent, and 200,000 children would be removed from poverty. This would be paid for by a one percent rise in the basic rate and by decreasing child benefits for more wealthy families.

So long as Labour and the Liberal Democrats run scared of redistribution, they are leaving poorer voters with no alternative other than to vote for the Conservatives who, by alluding to possible cuts, are attracting the support of low-income working families. The Mirrlees Review concluded that to improve the incomes of the poorest workers the cost would have to be incurred by the ‘bulk’ of the population. The cost, however, could be distributed in such a way that the rich pay more. Yet, it is middle England that Gordon Brown and Labour seem determined to appeal to. The short-term gains of this strategy for Labour were obvious, but as times get harder they are losing their core electorate.

As Neal Lawson said in a message to Compass members: ‘There is now no point trying to pile up middle class support in southern seats if our core vote is deserting us and destroying our voting base.’ It is not just voters who are deserting Labour, either, as membership continues to fall and MPs become more disillusioned. Brown must now be bold and regain the initiative. By making the case for tax increases for the richest, or by tightening the loopholes which see them pay proportionately less tax, he could really help poorer workers and provide incentives for more people to work. Moreover, with 76 percent of the population concerned that the gap between the rich and the poor is too great, this would not only appeal to those on lower incomes but also the wider population, giving Labour the policies to dispel David Cameron’s claim that the Tories are now the party of the poor.

Lawson added: ‘From Northern Rock, to the credit crunch and the Governor of the Bank of England condemning City pay excesses – the moment is ripe for Brown and his Cabinet to assert a need and a willingness to put the interest of society first.’ Brown claims to be ‘listening’ and ‘feeling our pain’ but we do not need a listener, we need a leader, and to repair the damage done he must act now and act decisively. Don’t hold your breath.